Android EditText: select all text while touch and clear when user starts typing.

Question

I have a edit text in my app. When the user touches the edit text the whole text should be selected and when he starts typing text should be cleared. An example is browser address bar. Is there any way to do this?Please help me.

Use the android:hint="text witch you want to display " after keyboard enable this is despra — Zala Janaksinh, Nov 21 '12 at 04:38
You can do [this][1] to select all text inside edittext [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/a/4669511/1627599 — kittu88, Nov 21 '12 at 04:49
@Asfaq: I want to clear previous data when the user starts typing — user1767260, Nov 21 '12 at 04:58

score 32 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 21 '12 at 04:44

32

You can select all text in EditText by using

android:selectAllOnFocus and also setSelectAllOnFocus(boolean)

answered Nov 21 '12 at 04:44

Ram kiran Pachigolla

20,897
15
57
78

1

Thanks.This selects the text but when I again touch on the edit text to display the keypad, text is not cleared. – user1767260 Nov 21 '12 at 04:57

Ron · Answer 2 · 2012-11-21T06:19:58.420

6

Call EditText.setSelectAllOnFocus(boolean selectAllOnFocus) to select all text on focus.

Set a click listener to your EditText and in onClick call edittext.selectAll();

edited Nov 21 '12 at 06:19

answered Nov 21 '12 at 04:38

Ron

24,175
8
56
97

Set a click listener to your EditText and in onClick call edittext.selectAll(); – Ron Nov 21 '12 at 06:20
Thanks, this is better than the answer, because you might not want your ET to have focus right away when you arrive in the activity. But instead of doing an `onClick` in the XML, I set an `onClickListener` in my ET activity, then put the `selectAll()` method to my ET on its `onClick()` method, and it selects all only when you click it. – Azurespot May 13 '16 at 06:47

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 21 '12 at 04:38

3

Add attribute to your main.xml file:

android:selectAllOnFocus="true"

Then all text will be selected and when user type something that will remove it.

answered Nov 21 '12 at 04:38

Marcin S.

11,161
6
50
63

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 21 '12 at 05:10

1

You can use property android:hint instead of android:text and you get what you want wihout special code.

answered Nov 21 '12 at 05:10

Artyom Kiriliyk

2,513
1
17
21

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 21 '12 at 05:19

You can select all text in EditText by using android:selectAllOnFocus or setSelectAllOnFocus(boolean).

Set a flag when all text is selected. Then detect a text change by using the addTextChangedListener method on your EditText and make your class implement or define an inner class implementing the TextWatcher class.

In this watcher class method, check the flag you set to indicate whether all text is selected. if true, then do TextView.setText(""). This will clear the text. Now set the flag to false again so that subsequent text changes will not cause the text to be cleared.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 24 '14 at 09:20

This is working , all text will be selected and when user type something that will remove it.

             editText.setSelectAllOnFocus(true);

            editText.requestFocus();
            editText.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
                @Override
                public void run() {
                    InputMethodManager keyboard = (InputMethodManager) catalougeJobDetailFragment
                            .getActivity().getSystemService(
                                    Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);
                    keyboard.showSoftInput(commentEt, 0);
                }
            }, 20);

Android EditText: select all text while touch and clear when user starts typing.

6 Answers6

Linked