Android: Coloring part of a string using TextView.setText()?

Question

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?

Answer 1

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);

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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).