How to change letter spacing in a Textview?

Question

How can i change letter spacing in a textview? Will it help if I have HTML text in it (I cannot use webview in my code).

P.S. I'm using my own typeface in the textview with HTML text.

Answer 1

Since API 21 there is an option set letter spacing. You can call method setLetterSpacing or set it in XML with attribute letterSpacing.

Answer 2

More space:

  android:letterSpacing="0.1"

Less space:

 android:letterSpacing="-0.07"

Answer 3

check out android:textScaleX

Depending on how much spacing you need, this might help. That's the only thing remotely related to letter-spacing in the TextView.

Edit: please see @JerabekJakub's response below for an updated, better method to do this starting with api 21 (Lollipop)

Answer 4

This answer is based on Pedro's answer but adjusted so it also works if text attribute is already set:

package nl.raakict.android.spc.widget;
import android.content.Context;
import android.text.Spannable;
import android.text.SpannableString;
import android.text.style.ScaleXSpan;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.widget.TextView;


public class LetterSpacingTextView extends TextView {
    private float letterSpacing = LetterSpacing.BIGGEST;
    private CharSequence originalText = "";


    public LetterSpacingTextView(Context context) {
        super(context);
    }

    public LetterSpacingTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs){
        super(context, attrs);
        originalText = super.getText();
        applyLetterSpacing();
        this.invalidate();
    }

    public LetterSpacingTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle){
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
    }

    public float getLetterSpacing() {
        return letterSpacing;
    }

    public void setLetterSpacing(float letterSpacing) {
        this.letterSpacing = letterSpacing;
        applyLetterSpacing();
    }

    @Override
    public void setText(CharSequence text, BufferType type) {
        originalText = text;
        applyLetterSpacing();
    }

    @Override
    public CharSequence getText() {
        return originalText;
    }

    private void applyLetterSpacing() {
        if (this == null || this.originalText == null) return;
        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
        for(int i = 0; i < originalText.length(); i++) {
            String c = ""+ originalText.charAt(i);
            builder.append(c.toLowerCase());
            if(i+1 < originalText.length()) {
                builder.append("\u00A0");
            }
        }
        SpannableString finalText = new SpannableString(builder.toString());
        if(builder.toString().length() > 1) {
            for(int i = 1; i < builder.toString().length(); i+=2) {
                finalText.setSpan(new ScaleXSpan((letterSpacing+1)/10), i, i+1, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
            }
        }
        super.setText(finalText, BufferType.SPANNABLE);
    }

    public class LetterSpacing {
        public final static float NORMAL = 0;
        public final static float NORMALBIG = (float)0.025;
        public final static float BIG = (float)0.05;
        public final static float BIGGEST = (float)0.2;
    }
}

If you want to use it programatically:

LetterSpacingTextView textView = new LetterSpacingTextView(context);
textView.setSpacing(10); //Or any float. To reset to normal, use 0 or LetterSpacingTextView.Spacing.NORMAL
textView.setText("My text");
//Add the textView in a layout, for instance:
((LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.myLinearLayout)).addView(textView);

Answer 5

after API >=21 there is inbuild method provided by TextView called setLetterSpacing

check this for more

Answer 6

I built a custom class that extends TextView and solves this problem... Check out my answer here =)

Answer 7

As android doesn't support such a thing, you can do it manually with FontCreator. It has good options for font modifying. I used this tool to build a custom font, even if it takes some times but you can always use it in your projects.

Answer 8

For embedding HTML text in your textview you can use Html.fromHTML() syntax. More information you will get from http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/Html.html#fromHtml%28java.lang.String%29