getActionBar returns null

It seems there are several conditions which need to be met in order for this to work. The one which stumped me for a long time was this:

Make sure your activity extends Activity (NOT ActionBarActivity).

public class MagicActivity extends Activity

Make sure your app manifest has something like

<application
    ...
    android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Holo" >

and make sure your activity layout has

<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    ....
    android:theme="@android:style/Theme.WithActionBar" >

-Mark

I seemed to solve all my errors by switching getActionBar() with getSupportActionBar(). I had tried different themes, adding getWindow().requestFeature(Window.FEATURE_ACTION_BAR);, made sure the setContentView(view) was first and all the other things seen before.

It seems you need to request having an Actionbar (!= titlebar) either via a Theme or via below code.

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

    // The Action Bar is a window feature. The feature must be requested
    // before setting a content view. Normally this is set automatically
    // by your Activity's theme in your manifest. The provided system
    // theme Theme.WithActionBar enables this for you. Use it as you would
    // use Theme.NoTitleBar. You can add an Action Bar to your own themes
    // by adding the element <item name="android:windowActionBar">true</item>
    // to your style definition.
    getWindow().requestFeature(Window.FEATURE_ACTION_BAR);

    setContentView(R.layout.main);

    // experiment with the ActionBar 
    ActionBar actionBar = getActionBar();
    actionBar.hide();
}

Code from [here]