How to set the font style to bold, italic and underlined in an Android TextView?

Question

I want to make a TextView's content bold, italic and underlined. I tried the following code and it works, but doesn't underline.

<Textview android:textStyle="bold|italic" ..

How do I do it? Any quick ideas?

[Underline TextView - 5 Amazing ways](https://androidride.com/underline-a-textview-in-android/) — Vijay Ram, May 19 '20 at 07:10

score 396 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 22 '13 at 12:51

This should make your TextView bold, underlined and italic at the same time.

strings.xml

<resources>
    <string name="register"><u><b><i>Copyright</i></b></u></string>
</resources>

To set this String to your TextView, do this in your main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/textview"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:text="@string/register" />

or In JAVA,

TextView textView = new TextView(this);
textView.setText(R.string.register);

Sometimes the above approach will not be helpful when you might have to use Dynamic Text. So in that case SpannableString comes into action.

String tempString="Copyright";
TextView text=(TextView)findViewById(R.id.text);
SpannableString spanString = new SpannableString(tempString);
spanString.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(), 0, spanString.length(), 0);
spanString.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), 0, spanString.length(), 0);
spanString.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.ITALIC), 0, spanString.length(), 0);
text.setText(spanString);

OUTPUT

enter image description here

I checked it in 2.1. So at least it should work from 2.1 and above — Andro Selva, Oct 14 '12 at 02:03
Why it's not work on dynamic concatenated string? It's wired that some numbers appeared.... — AuBee, Oct 14 '16 at 22:54

score 305 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

305

I don't know about underline, but for bold and italic there is "bolditalic". There is no mention of underline here: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html#attr_android:textStyle

Mind you that to use the mentioned bolditalic you need to, and I quote from that page

Must be one or more (separated by '|') of the following constant values.

so you'd use bold|italic

You could check this question for underline: Can I underline text in an android layout?

edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

Community

1
1

answered Jan 07 '11 at 07:59

Nanne

64,065
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52

for under line.. `textView.setPaintFlags(Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG);` – bCliks Sep 11 '13 at 05:51
2

@bala be aware that your solution always underlines the whole text, so it's not feasible in cases when one wants to underline just a portion of it. – Giulio Piancastelli Apr 02 '14 at 18:14
Using xml instead of doing it by code is preferred when possible. See Andro Selva's answer below – El Sushiboi Oct 23 '20 at 16:05

score 177 · Answer 3 · 2017-08-03T07:37:29.647

177

Or just like this in Kotlin:

val tv = findViewById(R.id.textViewOne) as TextView
tv.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC)
// OR
tv.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD or Typeface.ITALIC)
// OR
tv.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD)
// OR
tv.setTypeface(null, Typeface.ITALIC)
// AND
tv.paintFlags = tv.paintFlags or Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG

Or in Java:

TextView tv = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textViewOne);
tv.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC);
// OR
tv.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD|Typeface.ITALIC);
// OR
tv.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD);
// OR
tv.setTypeface(null, Typeface.ITALIC);
// AND
tv.setPaintFlags(tv.getPaintFlags()|Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG);

Keep it simple and in one line :)

edited Aug 03 '17 at 07:37

answered Apr 01 '13 at 12:35

2

By inserting the kotlinx.android.synthetic package for the view you are working with, the findViewByID is not necessary in Kotlin, making each of the setTypeface lines: textViewOne.setTypeface(...) – cren90 Dec 11 '17 at 22:50
is `paintFlags` necessary ? It's working without that – Prabs Feb 13 '19 at 06:27

score 85 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 15 '14 at 20:36

For bold and italic whatever you are doing is correct for underscore use following code

HelloAndroid.java

 package com.example.helloandroid;

 import android.app.Activity;
 import android.os.Bundle;
 import android.text.SpannableString;
 import android.text.style.UnderlineSpan;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class HelloAndroid extends Activity {
TextView textview;
/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);
    textview = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textview);
    SpannableString content = new SpannableString(getText(R.string.hello));
    content.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(), 0, content.length(), 0);
    textview.setText(content);
}
}

main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<TextView xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:id="@+id/textview"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:text="@string/hello"
android:textStyle="bold|italic"/>

string.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
 <resources>
  <string name="hello">Hello World, HelloAndroid!</string>
  <string name="app_name">Hello, Android</string>
</resources>

To remove the `underline` pass Null value instead of the `new UnderlineSpan()` as following `content.setSpan(null, 0, content.length(), 0);` — Sami Eltamawy, May 17 '15 at 08:54

score 51 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 08 '14 at 18:15

51

This is an easy way to add an underline, while maintaining other settings:

textView.setPaintFlags(textView.getPaintFlags() | Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG);

edited Jul 08 '14 at 18:15

Phil

35,852
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answered Jan 03 '13 at 04:29

sonida

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Be aware that this solution always underlines the whole text, so it's not feasible in cases when one wants to underline just a portion of it. – Giulio Piancastelli Apr 02 '14 at 18:15

score 47 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 08 '15 at 12:31

Programmatialy:

You can do programmatically using setTypeface() method:

Below is the code for default Typeface

textView.setTypeface(null, Typeface.NORMAL);      // for Normal Text
textView.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD);        // for Bold only
textView.setTypeface(null, Typeface.ITALIC);      // for Italic
textView.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC); // for Bold and Italic

and if you want to set custom Typeface:

textView.setTypeface(textView.getTypeface(), Typeface.NORMAL);      // for Normal Text
textView.setTypeface(textView.getTypeface(), Typeface.BOLD);        // for Bold only
textView.setTypeface(textView.getTypeface(), Typeface.ITALIC);      // for Italic
textView.setTypeface(textView.getTypeface(), Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC); // for Bold and Italic

XML:

You can set Directly in XML file in like:

android:textStyle="normal"
android:textStyle="normal|bold"
android:textStyle="normal|italic"
android:textStyle="bold"
android:textStyle="bold|italic"

How can i change font family using setTypeface also apply bold,italic,underline ? — Prince Dholakiya, Oct 09 '18 at 05:05
@DPrince look at here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12128331/how-to-change-fontfamily-of-textview-in-android — King of Masses, Oct 09 '18 at 16:02

Ahmed Hegazy · Answer 7 · 2017-03-15T00:49:33.527

27

If you are reading that text from a file or from the network.

You can achieve it by adding HTML tags to your text like mentioned

This text is <i>italic</i> and <b>bold</b>
and <u>underlined</u> <b><i><u>bolditalicunderlined</u></b></i>

and then you can use the HTML class that processes HTML strings into displayable styled text.

// textString is the String after you retrieve it from the file
textView.setText(Html.fromHtml(textString));

edited Mar 15 '17 at 00:49

answered Jan 08 '15 at 23:07

Ahmed Hegazy

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fromHtml(String) method was deprecated in API level 24 More discussion here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37904739/html-fromhtml-deprecated-in-android-n – Pavel Biryukov Oct 23 '17 at 09:34

score 21 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 14 '14 at 10:27

21

Without quotes works for me:

<item name="android:textStyle">bold|italic</item>

edited Apr 14 '14 at 10:27

answered Aug 11 '11 at 09:07

Lotfi

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score 13 · Answer 9 · answered Feb 26 '20 at 09:22

You can achieve it easily by using Kotlin's buildSpannedString{} under its core-ktx dependency.

val formattedString = buildSpannedString {
    append("Regular")
    bold { append("Bold") }
    italic { append("Italic") }
    underline { append("Underline") }
    bold { italic {append("Bold Italic")} }
}

textView.text = formattedString

score 12 · Answer 10 · answered Mar 20 '20 at 18:08

12

Just one line of code in xml

        android:textStyle="italic"

answered Mar 20 '20 at 18:08

Bo Z

2,359
1
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score 5 · Answer 11 · answered Sep 02 '14 at 09:26

5

    style="?android:attr/listSeparatorTextViewStyle

by making this style, u can achieve underlining

answered Sep 02 '14 at 09:26

dreamdeveloper

1,266
1
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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 21 '23 at 10:21

The community answer and the answer by Vivek have introduced the SpannableString class. This works, but what if you want more flexibility to build the string piece by piece, with different styles/effects in each piece, in StringBuilder style?

Is there something like StringBuilder for spannable strings? It turns out there is. Morgan Koh's answer explains it for Kotlin. In Java, we can do it too, something like

  SpannableStringBuilder myString = new SpannableStringBuilder().append("this in bold",boldSpan,Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
  myString.append("\n\nThis line in regular text\n\n");

How to set the font style to bold, italic and underlined in an Android TextView?

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