---
name: Meatball menu
slug: meatball-menu
category: component
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-28T00:00:00.000Z
definition: An overflow menu whose trigger is three horizontal dots, usually
  sitting at the end of a row or a card.
aliases:
  - name: three dots menu
  - name: horizontal ellipsis menu
  - name: three horizontal dots
    source: community
tags:
  - icons
  - menus
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - kebab-menu
    - hamburger-menu
  variantOf:
    - overflow-menu
  partOf: []
  seeAlso: []
implementations: []
sources: []
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: extra actions behind three dots lying sideways
---

A meatball menu is three dots lying flat, and the actions behind them. The name is
the same kitchen vernacular that gave us the [kebab](/kebab-menu) and the
[hamburger](/hamburger-menu): a kebab is skewered, so its dots stack vertically, and
meatballs sit in a row on the plate. Nobody designed this vocabulary. It grew because
the glyphs have no official names and people needed something to say in a review.

The honest part first: the distinction carries no functional difference at all.
Rotate the dots and nothing about the component changes, not the menu, not the
keyboard contract, not the accessible name it still needs. That is exactly why the
words are worth pinning down. When two people are looking at the same screen the
orientation is obvious and the name is redundant; in a ticket, a design review, or a
search box it is the only handle anyone has, and "the three dots thing" matches both
glyphs and finds neither.

Orientation does track placement, which is where the small amount of real design
guidance lives. Horizontal dots read as belonging to the horizontal thing they sit at
the end of, a table row or a card header, and they fill a wide slot better than a tall
one. Vertical dots suit a narrow column and a list that is already a stack. Whichever
way they lie, the rules of the [overflow menu](/overflow-menu) apply unchanged: give
the trigger a real accessible name, because three dots announce nothing, and never
let it be the only route to an action.

Platform habit explains most of what you will see. Material's own menus put the
vertical dots in a top app bar, so Android products lean kebab, while a great deal of
web tooling puts the horizontal dots at the end of table rows. Both are conventions
rather than rules, and mixing the two in one product is the actual mistake, since a
reader learns one glyph as "there is more here" and then has to learn a second.