Write text with style (Bold, italic) in Android EditText

Question

I want to give style to text while typing in edittext, for example make text bold or italic. I know how do this after typing and selecting part of text with help of spannable, but I want to do this while typing. For example after clicking a bold button, everything I type be bold. Can anyone give a hint to me how do this?

Answer 1

you can try to do this in code like this:

TextView textView=(TextView)findViewById(R.id.your_textView_id);
SpannableString spanString = new SpannableString(tempString);
spanString.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(), 0, spanString.length(), 0);
spanString.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), 0, spanString.length(), 0);
spanString.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.ITALIC), 0, spanString.length(), 0);
textView.setText(spanString);

you can try these in on click listener of a button to change an edittext content and after that invalidate it

You can do:

((EditText) mView.findViewById(R.id.your_edittext)).addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {
    @Override
    public void beforeTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int count, int after) {

    }

    @Override
    public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {

    }

    @Override
    public void afterTextChanged(Editable s) {

    }
});

by this any time during the texting you can do it

Answer 2

Try

android:textStyle="bold"

Reference: Full Descriptoion

Answer 3

I had the same requirement. I used addTextChangedListener and styled text using Html.fromHtml() in onTextChanged method, also removed textChangeListener and added it back once text was styled, just to prevent infinite loop

binding.descriptionEditText.addTextChangedListener(object : TextWatcher {
            override fun beforeTextChanged(s: CharSequence?, start: Int, count: Int, after: Int) {
                Log.d(TAG, "beforeTextChanged: $s")
            }

            override fun onTextChanged(s: CharSequence?, start: Int, before: Int, count: Int) {
                Log.d(TAG, "onTextChanged: called $s")
                binding.descriptionEditText.removeTextChangedListener(this)

                if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
                    binding.descriptionEditText.setText(
                        Html.fromHtml(
                            s.toString(),
                            HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY
                        )
                    )
                } else {
                    binding.descriptionEditText.setText(
                        Html.fromHtml(
                            s.toString()
                        )
                    )
                }
      //to bring cursor back to the end          
      binding.descriptionEditText.setSelection(binding.descriptionEditText.text.length)
                binding.descriptionEditText.addTextChangedListener(this)
            }

            override fun afterTextChanged(s: Editable?) {

            }

        })

It sort of works but if we type too fast or delete any content too fast, it lags. I found this blog it looks quite complex but seems promising. I haven't implemented it yet.

Answer 4

Just use android:textStyle="bold" or "italic" as per your requirements and its done. And if you want to make it bold or italic after pressing some button. Then make a method in which you mention something like edittext.setOnClickListener and inside that use the id of the edit text and use the edittext.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD); attributes