How to selected or highlight TextView programmatically in Android?

Question

Currently, I am create a small app for reading. There is a textview to display text. We can bookmark text and store in a listview. I want to click from listview and it highlight or select the bookmark index in the textview. I can get the bookmark_index. Is there method like textview.setSelect(Start,Length)? or Any library can do it? Thank

Please look image view to understand my idea.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 20 '17 at 09:46

1

Use Spannable

Spannable WordtoSpan = new SpannableString("partial colored text");        
WordtoSpan.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.BLUE), startIndex, stopIndex, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(WordtoSpan);

answered Jan 20 '17 at 09:46

Nitesh

3,868
1
20
26

Thank for idea, I will try it. I just found it on http://stackoverflow.com/a/2120190/5241603 too. – K.Sopheak Jan 20 '17 at 09:47
1

Yes, try it. Hope it will fulfill your requirement. – Nitesh Jan 20 '17 at 09:49

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 08 '21 at 15:57

1

All the above solutions were not working for me. Then I added android:textIsSelectable="true" in XML, but it wasn't working.

What makes it working is to add textView.setTextIsSelectable(true) in your activity or fragment or adapter.

answered Mar 08 '21 at 15:57

Kishan Solanki

13,761
4
85
82

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 20 '17 at 09:53

It depends on the minimum Android version that you'd like to support.

On 3.0+ (API Level 11 and up), you have the textIsSelectable attribute on the TextView, which enables this behavior. E.g.:

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/deviceIdTV"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:textIsSelectable="true"
    android:text="" />

Or you can implement this feature yourself using spans like below.

TextView myTV = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textView1);
String  textString = "StackOverFlow Rocks!!!"; 
Spannable spanText = Spannable.Factory.getInstance().newSpannable(textString);
spanText.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(0xFFFFFF00), 14, 19, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
myTV.setText(spanText);

tm1701 · Answer 4 · 2019-08-30T15:18:03.077

Maybe this solution will help you for provisioning both a menu or textselection.

I wanted text to be either selectable (for copy and paste) or wanted other gestures to work.

Set textIsSelectable to false, either in the layout file or programmatically.
Set an onTouchListener on the textview with your Gestures.
Allow one of the gestures to switch to textSelection mode. See below.

How to set textSelection programmatically?

Set the textIsSelectable, focusable, longPressable to true
Set the onTouchListener to null.
Install a click listener for switching back to the normal gestures / menu.

1) Install your GestureHandler:

// Create your Touch Listener  
onTouchListener = new OnSwipeTouchListener(mCtx, this);
view.setOnTouchListener( onTouchListener);

2) Switch to textselction modus:

// Create your popup with an menu option to switch to textselection modus:
PopupMenu popup = new PopupMenu(mCtx, view);
popup.inflate(R.menu.text_options_menu);
popup.setOnMenuItemClickListener(new PopupMenu.OnMenuItemClickListener() {
    @Override
    public boolean onMenuItemClick(MenuItem item) {
        switch (item.getItemId()) {
            case ...
            case R.id.text_textisselectable:
                view.setOnTouchListener(null);
                ((TextView)view).setTextIsSelectable( true);
                ((TextView)view).setFocusable( true);
                ((TextView)view).setLongClickable( true);
                // Install a click listener to switch back to the previous Touch Listener
                ((TextView)view).setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
                    @Override
                    public void onClick(View v) {
                        PopupMenu popupx = new PopupMenu(mCtx, view);
                        popupx.inflate(R.menu.selecttext_back_menu);
                        popupx.setOnMenuItemClickListener(new PopupMenu.OnMenuItemClickListener() {
                            @Override
                            public boolean onMenuItemClick(MenuItem item) {
                                ((TextView)view).setTextIsSelectable( false);
                                ((TextView)view).setFocusable( false);
                                ((TextView)view).setLongClickable( false);
                                view.setOnTouchListener(onTouchListener);
                                return true;
                            }});
                            popupx.show();
                        }
                    });
                break;

How to selected or highlight TextView programmatically in Android?

4 Answers4

Linked