Text selection depending on the phone

Question

In my app, I have an EditText where the user can select a part of the text. The problem is that the selection behavior is different depending on the phone : with one, the user can select normally, but with another one the user must tap on the text indicator and then tap on "Select All".

How can I set the behavior like the first one as default ? And why the behavior is different between phones ?

Thank you for your answers, have a nice day !

EDIT :

Now I select the word which contains the cursor with this method :

fun EditText.selectCurrentWord() {
    val textSpan = text
    val selection = selectionStart
    val pattern = Pattern.compile("\\w+")
    val matcher = pattern.matcher(textSpan)
    var start: Int
    var end: Int

    while (matcher.find()) {
        start = matcher.start()
        end = matcher.end()

        if (selection in start..end) {
            setSelection(start, end)
            break
        }
    }
}

But now the problem is that cursors at the start and end of selection doesn't appear...

The EditText is selectable and isCursorVisible is set to true.

As an alternative you can give a dedicated button to [select all text](https://stackoverflow.com/a/31551639/7948109) — Rahul Gaur, Feb 17 '20 at 08:19
@RahulGaur Yes, but I have a multilines EditText, so I want to select only one part of the text... — Ady, Feb 17 '20 at 08:25
You can modify this, if you want to select only the first line, you can find the position where `return` is — Rahul Gaur, Feb 17 '20 at 08:29
But how can I select the word where the user does a long click ? — Ady, Feb 17 '20 at 08:43
Please have a look at this [answer on how to get cursor position](https://stackoverflow.com/a/6900610/7948109) — Rahul Gaur, Feb 17 '20 at 08:46
Yes thank you ! I can select the good word thanks to you, but cursors do not appear... — Ady, Feb 17 '20 at 09:52

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

2

You can try using a Button to select the text using

EditText myET = findViewById(R.id.myET);
Button selectBtn = findViewById(R.id.selectBtn);

selectBtn.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
    @Override
    public void onClick(View v) {
        myET.setSelectAllOnFocus(true);
        myET.selectAll();    
    }
});

You can open context menu using

openContextMenu(myET);

You can also get the position of starting and end point of cursor

myET.getSelectionStart();
myET.getSelectionEnd();

Referring answers

Update 1

Add this in your button click, this seems to work, but sometimes you have to click 2 times you can tweak this

myET.performLongClick();
myET.setSelection(0, myET.length());

Hope this will help!

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

1
1

answered Feb 17 '20 at 10:33

Rahul Gaur

1,661
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Hi, thank you for your answer ! I've tried to use ```openContextMenu``` but nothing happens... With the start/end points of cursor, can I show anchors ? – Ady Feb 17 '20 at 10:54
Thank you it's perfect ! I can even remove the ```postDelayed``` to just keep ```performLongClick``` and ```setSelection``` – Ady Feb 17 '20 at 13:39

Text selection depending on the phone

1 Answers1

Update 1