How to make an email address clickable?

Question

I have some text in my application that says in case you need extra help, please email us and here is the email address, blah, blah.

But I want them to be able to click the email link and have their email client open. Is that possible? Or is that bad practice?

If it is reasonable practice, how can it be done?

Answer 1

This is a very reasonable request and the Linkify class will turn every email address into an appropriate link for you. Simply add the autoLink attribute to your XML:

<TextView
    ...
    android:autoLink="email" />

Answer 2

You can make your text clickable by using setOnClickListener on the text

textView.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener());

You can open the email client by creating a new Intent with the ACTION_SEND. Settype, the email address and subject like this:

Intent emailintent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);
emailintent.setType("plain/text");
emailintent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL,new String[] {"mailk@gmail.com" });
emailintent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "");
emailintent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT,"");
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(emailintent, "Send mail..."));

Answer 3

You need to fire an intent in your onClickListener:

Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
intent.setType("text/plain"); // send email as plain text
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL, new String[] { "some@email.address" });
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, "subject");
intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "mail body");
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(intent, ""));

Answer 4

Please be aware of a little bug from API 24 onwards which makes the accepted solution not work if the local part of the email address has exactly 2 characters like "it@google.com".

See the issue: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/64435698

Allegedly fixed already, but apparently not rolled out yet. (Don't you love it that they know about the issue and don't even bother to update the documentation accordingly? https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html#attr_android:autoLink)

So unless you're sure that you're not dealing with such 2-letter email addresses, you should rather use the accepted approach from here for the time being:

TextView to send email when clicked

Take care to remove the autolink attribute from the TextView then.

Answer 5

The accepted answer may work for emails but if you want to detect different patterns like emails, contact numbers, weblink and set a separate on click implementations for these patterns I suggest you to use CustomClickableEmailPhoneTextview

Sample Code to use the library.

CustomPartialyClickableTextview customPartialyClickableTextview= (CustomPartialyClickableTextview) findViewById(R.id.textViewCustom);

                /**
                 * Create Objects For Click Patterns
                 */
                ClickPattern email=new ClickPattern();
                ClickPattern phone=new ClickPattern();
                ClickPattern weblink=new ClickPattern();

                /**
                 * set Functionality for what will happen on click of that pattern
                 * In this example pattern is email
                 */
                email.setOnClickListener(new ClickPattern.OnClickListener() {
                    @Override
                    public void onClick() {

                        Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this,"email clicked",Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();


                    }
                });

                /**
                 * set Functionality for what will happen on click of that pattern
                 * In this example pattern is phone
                 */
                phone.setOnClickListener(new ClickPattern.OnClickListener() {
                    @Override
                    public void onClick() {
                        Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this,"phone clicked",Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

                    }
                });

                /**
                 * set Functionality for what will happen on click of that pattern
                 * In this example pattern is weblink
                 */
                weblink.setOnClickListener(new ClickPattern.OnClickListener() {
                    @Override
                    public void onClick() {
                        Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this,"website clicked",Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();

                    }
                });

                /**
                 * set respective regex string to be used to identify patter
                 */
                email.setRegex("\\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\\.[A-Z]{2,4}\\b"); // regex for email
                phone.setRegex("[1-9][0-9]{9,14}"); // regex for phone number
                weblink.setRegex("^(https?|ftp|file)://[-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%?=~_|!:,.;]*[-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|]"); // regex for weblink

                /**
                 * add click pattern to the custom textview - first parameter is tag for reference second parameter is ClickPattern object
                 */
                customPartialyClickableTextview.addClickPattern("email",email);
                customPartialyClickableTextview.addClickPattern("phone",phone);
                customPartialyClickableTextview.addClickPattern("weblink",weblink);