Multiline TextView with width "wrap_content"

Question

I am wondering how to have a TextView display its content on several lines without hardcoding the width in the XML.

    <LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:gravity="right"
        android:orientation="horizontal">

        <TextView
            android:layout_width="wrap_content"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:singleLine="false"
            android:text="Long multiline text"/>

        <TextView
            android:textColor="@color/text_color"
            android:layout_width="130dp"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            />

    </LinearLayout>

Any thought welcome.

EDIT: my problem is that when the text exceeds the width set (because it reaches the end of the screen) a portion of the text is just not displayed. I would expect the text to be split on two lines

I'm confused by what you want. When the TextView reaches the width of its parent, then a new lines starts. Other than that where _do_ you want the lines breaks? You can manually break the line with: `android:text="long \nmultiline \ntext"`. You can also use the `maxWidth` attribute to wrap the TextView around the content until a desired width. — Sam, Mar 06 '13 at 21:38
Isn't that the default behavior of a `TextView`? What happens if you remove `maxLines` and `singleLine`? — nhaarman, Mar 06 '13 at 21:57
If I set the layout_width to a fixed value, it works. But I can't do that as the TextView has to fill the available space — znat, Mar 06 '13 at 22:01
Do you really need the second `TextView` with the fixed width? — nhaarman, Mar 06 '13 at 22:23
If I copy paste your xml file, the text gets wrapped as expected (only increasing the length of the text), it only is moved a bit off the screen. I will post a possible solution. — nhaarman, Mar 06 '13 at 22:48

score 24 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 06 '13 at 22:51

Though I cannot reproduce the not wrapping problem, you can fix the positioning problem by using a weight on the first TextView. Using the following XML gives the expected output in the graphical layout view in Eclipse:

<LinearLayout
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:gravity="right"
    android:orientation="horizontal">

    <TextView
        android:layout_width="0dp"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:singleLine="false"
        android:text="Long multiline text"/>

    <TextView
        android:textColor="@color/text_color"
        android:layout_width="130dp"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        />

</LinearLayout>

android:singleLine is now deprecated – Tom Bevelander Jul 26 '17 at 09:09 — Tom Bevelander, Jul 26 '17 at 09:09

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 06 '17 at 12:35

3

Also add

android:minLines="2"
android:scrollHorizontally="false"

edited Jul 06 '17 at 12:35

Petter Friberg

21,252
9
60
109

answered Jul 06 '17 at 12:30

Wafaa BEK

76
3

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 31 '16 at 16:43

0

You could try

android:inputType="textMultiLine"

in your TextView XML. This worked for me.

answered Aug 31 '16 at 16:43

remykarem

2,251
22
28

5

This is incorrect - android:inputType should only be used for EditText - use singleLine = false for textViews – RMcGuigan Jun 10 '18 at 15:12
@RMcGuigan, TextView also has an XML attribute called android:inputType. Please see https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView. – remykarem Jun 11 '18 at 03:11
It does yes, but it should not be used for setting textview to multi-line - as per lint warning. See my original comment for the correct solution – RMcGuigan Jun 11 '18 at 11:13

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 22 '19 at 00:53

I think I had very similar problem. I had a TextView with a text, where I was not sure how much lines will it take. It was encapsulated by a LinearLayout having android:layout_width="match_parent" to ensure my text will fill out all the space horizontally. However, the problem was that my text did not fit into 1 line and when it did break into a new line, the next view component below it did not move downwards to give enough space for the second line to be viewable fully.

I could achieve the solution by changing the LinearLayout that was containing my TextView into a RelativeLayout. By this way, the element below the text (actually below the Layout itself) was moved automatically to give enough space for the multi-line text.

Multiline TextView with width "wrap_content"

4 Answers4

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