While extending a sample Android activity that fires some other activities from its menu, I came to have some menu items handled within onOptionsItemSelected, and some menu items (that just fired intents) handled by calling setIntent within onCreateOptionsMenu. Basically something like: @Override public boolean onCreateOptionsMenu(Menu menu) { super.onCreateOptionsMenu(menu); menu.add(0, MENU_ID_1, Menu.NONE, R.string.menu_text_1); menu.add(0, MENU_ID_2, Menu.NONE, R.string.menu_text_2); menu.add(0, MENU_ID_3, Menu.NONE, R.string.menu_text_3). setIntent(new Intent(this, MyActivity_3.class)); return true; } @Override public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) { super.onOptionsItemSelected(item); switch (item.getItemId()) { case (MENU_ID_1): // Process menu command 1 ... return true; case (MENU_ID_2): // Process menu command 2 ... // E.g. also fire Intent for MyActivity_2 return true; default: return false; } } Apparently, in this situation the Intent set on MENU_ID_3 is never fired, or anyway the related activity is never started. Android javadoc at some point goes like <<[if you set an intent on a menu item] and nothing else handles the item, then the default behavior will be to [start the activity with the intent]. What does it actually mean "and nothing else handles the item"? Is it enough to return false from onOptionsItemSelected? I also tried not to call super.onOptionsItemSelected(item) at the beginning and only invoke it in the default switch case, but I had same results. Does anyone have any suggestion? Does Android allow to mix the two type of handling? Thanks for your time everyone.