Android: Copy to clipboard selected text from a TextView

Question

Is there a possibility to copy to clipboard from a TextView UI component only the selected text?

I've catched the long press event and I copied the full text to clipboard, but now I want to specify the start and the end of the selection to be copied from a TextView.

Thank you.

Answer 1

TextView tv;
String stringYouExtracted = tv.getText().toString();
int startIndex = tv.getSelectionStart();
int endIndex = tv.getSelectionEnd();
stringYouExtracted = stringYouExtracted.subString(startIndex, endIndex);
ClipboardManager clipboard = (ClipboardManager) getSystemService(CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
clipboard.setText(stringYouExtracted);

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EDIT (The previous is the full answer, but I ran into my answer by mistake so I would like to add):

With Newer APIs, change the last two lines to :

if(android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT < android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.HONEYCOMB) {
    android.text.ClipboardManager clipboard = (android.text.ClipboardManager) getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
    clipboard.setText(stringYouExtracted);
} else {
    android.content.ClipboardManager clipboard = (android.content.ClipboardManager) getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
    android.content.ClipData clip = android.content.ClipData.newPlainText("Copied Text", stringYouExtracted);
            clipboard.setPrimaryClip(clip);
}

"Copied Text" is a title for your COPY entity in newer APIS

Answer 2

you can do it this way:

ClipboardManager myClipboard = myClipboard = (ClipboardManager) getSystemService(CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
ClipData myClip;
EditText editText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.editText3);
int min = 0;
int max = editText.getText().length();
if (editText.isFocused()) {
    final int selStart = editText.getSelectionStart();
    final int selEnd = editText.getSelectionEnd();
    min = Math.max(0, Math.min(selStart, selEnd));
    max = Math.max(0, Math.max(selStart, selEnd));
}
// here is your selected text
final CharSequence selectedText = editText.getText().subSequence(min, max);
String text = selectedText.toString();


// copy to clipboard
myClip = ClipData.newPlainText("text", text);
myClipboard.setPrimaryClip(myClip);

Replace EditText with TextView