If your menu item supplies both a title and an icon—with the title and icon attributes—then the action item shows only the icon by default. If you want to display the text title, add "withText" to the showAsAction attribute. For example:
<item yourapp:showAsAction="ifRoom|withText" ... />
Note: The "withText" value is a hint to the action bar that the text title should appear. The action bar will show the title when possible, but might not if an icon is available and the action bar is constrained for space.
You should always define the title for each item even if you don't declare that the title appear with the action item, for the following reasons:
If there's not enough room in the action bar for the action item, the menu item appears in the overflow where only the title appears.
Screen readers for sight-impaired users read the menu item's title.
If the action item appears with only the icon, a user can long-press the item to reveal a tool-tip that displays the action title.
The icon is optional, but recommended. For icon design recommendations, see the Iconography design guide. You can also download a set of standard action bar icons (such as for Search or Discard) from the Downloads page.
You can also use "always" to declare that an item always appear as an action button. However, you should not force an item to appear in the action bar this way. Doing so can create layout problems on devices with a narrow screen. It's best to instead use "ifRoom" to request that an item appear in the action bar, but allow the system to move it into the overflow when there's not enough room. However, it might be necessary to use this value if the item includes an action view that cannot be collapsed and must always be visible to provide access to a critical feature.