android:ellipsize="end" and android:maxEms not working

Question

I added

android:ellipsize="end"
android:maxEms="8"
android:singleLine="true"

to my TextView with the intention of showing three dots at the end and max text limit of 8 but it's not working. It shows neither the dots nor any text limit.

score 20 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

20

Both of your attributes for adding 'the three dots effect' are correct

android:ellipsize="end"
android:singleLine="true"

but the effect happens only when the TextView does not have any free space on the screen to show the text.

To set the limit of the text in TextView you can use

android:maxLength="8"

but it doesn't add the three dots, and as far as I am aware you would have to do it manually.

Something like this

String text = "A bit longer text";
if (text.length() > 8) {
    text = text.substring(0, 8) + "...";
}

The android:maxEms is something else than previous, you can read more about it

What is meant by Ems? (Android TextView)

edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

Community

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answered Dec 11 '15 at 18:29

Marko

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i want to show three dots in the end.. read this.. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12686468/end-textview-with-3-dots-with-use-of-maxlength – Android Developer Dec 11 '15 at 18:30
why is android:ellipsize="end" not working?it should show three dots in case of large text length? – Android Developer Dec 11 '15 at 18:32
How do you want to limit the text? It usualy works if your width is match_parent and you have more text than it can into one line. – Marko Dec 11 '15 at 18:36
I want to limit text to maximum 8 characters and if more than that are there then it should show three dots.. – Android Developer Dec 11 '15 at 18:39
try `android:maxLength="8"` – stallianz Dec 11 '15 at 18:47
@Marko Reducing `android:maxEms="8"` value to `android:maxEms="4"` also solved my issue.. – Android Developer Dec 14 '15 at 13:43
@AndroidLearner this is not the right approach. `maxEms` means how many '**M**' charachters can fit in your `TextView`. You should avoid using it, since it is wrong. You can get a better explanation from the link in my answer. – Marko Dec 14 '15 at 13:46

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 12 '15 at 11:24

8

ellipsize will not work with width wrap_content

You can directly try the following example for testing.

<TextView
    android:layout_width="30dp"
    android:text="jhakjshdkajdhkjashkjdhakjsdjas"
    android:maxLines="1"
    android:lines="1"
    android:singleLine="true"
    android:ellipsize="end"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

I hope this will help you to resolve the issue.

edited Dec 12 '15 at 11:24

Aditya Vyas-Lakhan

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answered Dec 11 '15 at 19:04

Ajay Kumar Meher

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ellipsize **will** work with layout_width set to wrap_content aswell, but it has to take all the available space that it has assigned on the screen. – Marko Dec 11 '15 at 19:23
this should be best answer – blackHawk Aug 09 '19 at 10:20

nilsi · Answer 3 · 2021-11-02T09:35:02.450

3

For some reason, I accidentally had put

android:inputType="textCapSentences"

on my TextView which prevented my ellipses from showing

edited Nov 02 '21 at 09:35

answered Oct 11 '18 at 11:35

nilsi

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Yes its worked for me. After 4 hours of searching.. – Abreeth Nov 02 '21 at 09:15
Nice catch man! I Changed every attribute related to the line settings and none worked. As per your answer deleted the `inputType` attribute and daamn finally the ellipsize appeared! – Kozmotronik Nov 30 '21 at 14:59

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 01 '22 at 15:27

1

set android:layout_width="0dp" instead of android:layout_width="wrap_content" worked for me

answered Mar 01 '22 at 15:27

Kirguduck

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 06 '22 at 07:34

Best Wat to use

 <androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatTextView
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:ellipsize="end"
        android:lines="1"
        android:maxLines="1"
        android:minEms="1"
        android:singleLine="true" />

android:ellipsize="end" and android:maxEms not working

5 Answers5