91

I am looking to change the text of a TextView view via the .setText("") method while also coloring a part of the text (or making it bold, italic, transparent, etc.)and not the rest. For example:

title.setText("Your big island <b>ADVENTURE!</b>";

I know the above code is incorrect but it helps illustrate what I would like to achieve. How would I do this?

Improve this question
4

15 Answers 15

Reset to default
210

Use spans.

Example:

final SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder("your text here");

// Span to set text color to some RGB value
final ForegroundColorSpan fcs = new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(158, 158, 158)); 

// Span to make text bold
final StyleSpan bss = new StyleSpan(android.graphics.Typeface.BOLD); 

// Set the text color for first 4 characters
sb.setSpan(fcs, 0, 4, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE); 

// make them also bold
sb.setSpan(bss, 0, 4, Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE); 

yourTextView.setText(sb);
Improve this answer
Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

7 Comments

I really do't like the solution android offers here, as it does not work with multi language as I have no idea how many chars in my words are. I'm currently looking for a solution where I can have multiple spans that I can attach all to a TextView and then they are put together
The comment saying span to make text bold, should it say span to make text color?
@philipp if your problem is how many characters in your word, use the length() method on your String or StringBuilder or whatever
If there is a long text in the TextView, here is a more efficient way
I initially missed this when reading the answer, but your end index has to be +1 the ending index in the string (i.e. to span first four letters you have to set [start, end] as [0, 4] not [0, 3] )
|
47 
title.setText(Html.fromHtml("Your big island <b>ADVENTURE!</b>"));
Improve this answer

5 Comments

This is a far nicer solution to the original problem than the marked answer is.
If you have line breaks \n, this doesn't display the line breaks.
No, it is not nicer, there is no coloring feature, mentioned in question but SLOW method fromHTML()
So using <font color="#FFAADD>text</font> won't work?
@milosmns yes it does not work on all version specially older one. This is not the safest solution
26

I hope this helps you (it works with multi language).

<string name="test_string" ><![CDATA[<font color="%1$s"><b>Test/b></font>]]> String</string>

And on your java code, you can do:

int color = context.getResources().getColor(android.R.color.holo_blue_light);
String string = context.getString(R.string.test_string, color);
textView.setText(Html.fromHtml(string));

This way, only the "Test" part will be colored (and bold).

Improve this answer

3 Comments

Best Answer. This works perfectly for internationalized strings. Also has the advantage of being able to have your colored text in the middle of your string resource.
For further explanations see the Styling with HTML markup section here.
What makes the CDATA thing necessary?
25

If you are using Kotlin you can do the following using the android-ktx library

val title = SpannableStringBuilder()
        .append("Your big island ")
        .bold { append("ADVENTURE") } 

titleTextField.text = title

The bold is an extension function on SpannableStringBuilder. You can see the documentation here for a list of operations you can use.

Another example:

val ssb = SpannableStringBuilder()
            .color(green) { append("Green text ") }
            .append("Normal text ")
            .scale(0.5F) { append("Text at half size ") }
            .backgroundColor(green) { append("Background green") }

Where green is a resolved RGB color.

It is even possible to nest spans so you end up with something like an embedded DSL:

bold { underline { italic { append("Bold and underlined") } } }

You will need the following in your app module level build.gradle for it to work:

repositories {
    google()
}

dependencies {
    implementation 'androidx.core:core-ktx:0.3'
}
Improve this answer

1 Comment

Also, no matter which color I put it, it shows same purple color. val spannableStringBuilder = SpannableStringBuilder() spannableStringBuilder.bold { underline { color(R.color.test_color) { append(underlinedText) } } }
17

Here's an example that will look for all occurrences of a word (case insensitive), and color them red:

String notes = "aaa AAA xAaax abc aaA xxx";
SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder(notes);
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("aaa", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher m = p.matcher(notes);
while (m.find()){
    //String word = m.group();
    //String word1 = notes.substring(m.start(), m.end());

    sb.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(255, 0, 0)), m.start(), m.end(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
}
editText.setText(sb);
Improve this answer

1 Comment

i love your name :P Can i change the background of specific word with new BackgroundColorSpan(Color.parseColor("#BFFFC6")) ?
9

You can use a Spannable to give certain parts of a text certain aspects. I can look up an example if you want.

Ah, from right here on stackoverflow.

TextView TV = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.mytextview01); 
Spannable WordtoSpan = new SpannableString("I know just how to whisper, And I know just how to cry,I know just where to find the answers");        
WordtoSpan.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.BLUE), 15, 30, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
TV.setText(WordtoSpan);
Improve this answer

2 Comments

How can we configure start and end range for multi language text?
One idea could be to identify the word that you need to highlight and extract it as a separate string resource. When translating the phrase you will need to consider update the separate word also so that when you set the span to rely on the indexOf the string and string length to dynamically set the start and end indexes of the span.
4

If you want to use HTML, you need to use TextView.setText(Html.fromHtml(String htmlString))

If you want to do that often / repeatedly, you may have a look at a class (SpannableBuilder) I wrote, as Html.fromHtml() is not very efficient (it is using a big xml parsing machinery inside). It is described in this blog posting.

Improve this answer

Comments

4 

            String str1 = "If I forget my promise to ";
            String penalty = "Eat breakfast every morning,";
            String str2 = " then I ";
            String promise = "lose my favorite toy";
           

            String strb = "<u><b><font color='#081137'>"+ penalty +",</font></b></u>";
            String strc = "<u><b><font color='#081137'>"+ promise + "</font></b></u>";
            String strd = str1 +strb+ str2 + strc;
           tv_notification.setText(Html.fromHtml(strd));

or use this code:

    SpannableStringBuilder builder = new SpannableStringBuilder();
            SpannableString text1 = new SpannableString(str1);
            text1.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.silver)), 0, str1.length() - 1, 0);
            builder.append(text1);

            SpannableString text2 = new SpannableString(penalty);
            text2.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.midnight)), 0, penalty.length(), 0);
            text2.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(), 0, penalty.length(), 0);
            builder.append(text2);

            SpannableString text3 = new SpannableString(str2);
            text3.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.silver)),0, str2.length(), 0);
            builder.append(text3);


            SpannableString text4 = new SpannableString(promise);
            text4.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.midnight)), 0, promise.length(), 0);
            text4.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(),0, promise.length(), 0);
            builder.append(text4);

          tv_notification.setText(builder);

Improve this answer

Comments

4

I like to use SpannableStringBuilder by appending the different spans one by one, rather than calling setSpan by calculating the string lengths

as: (Kotlin code)

val amountSpannableString = SpannableString("₹$amount").apply {
  // text color
  setSpan(ForegroundColorSpan("#FD0025".parseColor()), 0, length, 0)
  // text size
  setSpan(AbsoluteSizeSpan(AMOUNT_SIZE_IN_SP.spToPx(context)), 0, length, 0)
  // font medium
  setSpan(TypefaceSpan(context.getString(R.string.font_roboto_medium)), 0, length, 0)
}

val spannable: Spannable = SpannableStringBuilder().apply {
  // append the different spans one by one
  // rather than calling setSpan by calculating the string lengths
  append(TEXT_BEFORE_AMOUNT)
  append(amountSpannableString)
  append(TEXT_AFTER_AMOUNT)
}

Result

Improve this answer

Comments

4 
public static void setColorForPath(Spannable spannable, String[] paths, int color) {
    for (int i = 0; i < paths.length; i++) {
        int indexOfPath = spannable.toString().indexOf(paths[i]);
        if (indexOfPath == -1) {
            continue;
        }
        spannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(color), indexOfPath,
                indexOfPath + paths[i].length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
    }
}

Using

Spannable spannable = new SpannableString("Your big island ADVENTURE");
Utils.setColorForPath(spannable, new String[] { "big", "ADVENTURE" }, Color.BLUE);

textView.setText(spannable);

enter image description here

Improve this answer

Comments

2

You can concatenate two or more Spans. This way is easier to color dynamic text using length value.

SpannableStringBuilder span1 = new SpannableStringBuilder("Android");
ForegroundColorSpan color1=new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.colorPrimary));
span1.setSpan(color1, 0, span1.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);

SpannableStringBuilder span2 = new SpannableStringBuilder("Love");
ForegroundColorSpan color2=new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.colorSecondary));
span2.setSpan(color2, 0, span2.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);

Spanned concatenated=(Spanned) TextUtils.concat(span1," => ",span2);

SpannableStringBuilder result = new SpannableStringBuilder(concatenated);

TextView tv = (TextView) rootView.findViewById(R.id.my_texview);
tv.setText(result, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);
Improve this answer

Comments

2

Use this code its helpful 

TextView txtTest = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.txtTest);
txtTest.setText(Html.fromHtml("This is <font color="#ff4343">Red</font> Color!"));
Improve this answer

Comments

1

You can use extension function in Kotlin

fun CharSequence.colorizeText(
    textPartToColorize: CharSequence,
    @ColorInt color: Int
): CharSequence = SpannableString(this).apply {
    val startIndexOfText = this.indexOf(textPartToColorize.toString())
    setSpan(ForegroundColorSpan(color), startIndexOfText, startIndexOfText.plus(textPartToColorize.length), 0)
}

Usage:

val colorizedText = "this text will be colorized"
val myTextToColorize = "some text, $colorizedText continue normal text".colorizeText(colorizedText,ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.someColor))
Improve this answer

Comments

0

Html.fromHtml is deprecated

Use HtmlCompat instead

HtmlCompat.fromHtml(html, HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY)
Improve this answer

Comments

0

If you do not want to get in trouble on lower SDK version use SpannableStringBuilder with ForegroundColorSpan or BackgroundColorSpan as HtmlCompat.fromHtml color style does not applied on older Android version.

Improve this answer

Comments

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.