How to make an EditText selectable but not editable on Android Ice Cream Sandwich?

Question

I have a ListView in Activity, and in each item , I insert an EditText for show my text. I need drag the handle to select text & copy the text, but can not edit text. On Android ICS, How can I do this?

score 23 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 13 '15 at 13:25

23

text.setTextIsSelectable(true) requires API 11. For those using lower API's: In xml use:

android:inputType="none"
android:textIsSelectable="true"

This will make your EditText uneditable but selectable.

edited Aug 13 '15 at 13:25

Community

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answered Jun 08 '13 at 09:49

Frozen Crayon

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I can confirm that on API 10 (tested on 2.3.4 and 2.3.6) the above two lines doesn't work. The EditText is still editable and the keyboard pops out.. – Bruce Nov 24 '13 at 01:25
Then what is the solution? – Frozen Crayon Nov 25 '13 at 02:14
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Check out my full answer posted at http://stackoverflow.com/a/20173020/1241783. Not very proud of the hacky way but it is the only way that I know of for now. Do let me know if someone knows a better way for API version < 10. Thanks! – Bruce Nov 25 '13 at 14:36

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered May 11 '12 at 01:41

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I think you could override the onKeyDown() method, make it do nothing but return true. It should catch the keypresses from the keyboard and negate them before they can go into the text in the EditText.

You might also try setting editable to false like this

android:editable="false"

on the EditText in your xml layout. However I am not certain if this will let you still highlight and copy, but it is worth a shot.

answered May 11 '12 at 01:41

FoamyGuy

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Thanks, Tim! But android:editable is deprecated on Android Ice Cream Sandwich. – Limp May 11 '12 at 01:56
did they leave a note that tells you what to use instead? – FoamyGuy May 11 '12 at 02:03
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Yes, they told me use TextView instead. But TextView can not be selected. – Limp May 11 '12 at 02:48

Limp · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-18T03:29:34.013

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I resolved this problem.
Just set TextView like this:

text.setTextIsSelectable(true);

edited May 18 '12 at 03:29

answered May 18 '12 at 00:59

Limp

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered May 16 '17 at 16:51

Althouth android:editable is deprecated and Lint suggests to use inputType, It doesn't seem to work. So android:editable="false"is apparently the best possible solution for all android versions.

<EditText
    android:id="@+id/editText"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:editable="false"
    android:textIsSelectable="true"
    tools:ignore="Deprecated" />

How to make an EditText selectable but not editable on Android Ice Cream Sandwich?

4 Answers4

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