Creating Android Sliding Sidebar (Hamburger) Menu with Navigation Drawer Icon

By now most of us are familiar with Navigation Drawers as they’ve been in use by Facebook, Gmail, Google Play Music, Google Play Music and tons of others apps. It’s that sliding panel that comes out onto the screen when you swipe a finger from the left edge of the screen (or sometimes right edge) or tap on the 3 bar button (sometimes called hamburger icon) in the Action Bar. If still confused then check out the design guide and you’ll know what I’m referring to. The design guide will also tell you when to use it and when not to use it.

In this article I’ll go through how to create a navigation drawer (also referred to as sidebar menu, slide-out menu, sliding menu, hamburger menu, basements, etc.) for your own apps using the DrawerLayout APIs in the support library. But before getting into how to create a navigation (hamburger) drawer, you should not only go through the design guide but also read a couple of articles on how you might be making a wrong decision by using a hamburger menu and you could possibly resort to other methods to avoid it: