How to create a TextArea in Android

Question

How do I display a TextArea for my android project? From xml, the only choice is TextField, multi lined. But thats editable. I need a TextArea which is only for displaying messages/text can't be edit/input by the user.

Answer 1

Try this:

<EditText         android:id="@+id/edit_text"         android:layout_width="match_parent"         android:layout_height="150dp"         android:inputType="text|textMultiLine"         android:gravity="top"/> 

Answer 2

Use TextView inside a ScrollView

<ScrollView     android:id="@+id/ScrollView01"     android:layout_width="wrap_content"     android:layout_height="150dip">      <TextView         android:layout_width="wrap_content"         android:layout_height="wrap_content"/>  </ScrollView> 

Answer 3

If you do not want to allow user to enter text TextView is the best option here. Any how you can also add EditText for this purpose. here is a sample code for that.

This would automatically show scrollbar if there is more text than the specified lines.

<EditText
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:inputType="textMultiLine"
    android:lines="8"
    android:maxLines="10"
    android:minLines="6"
    android:scrollbars="vertical" />

Edit: Adding attributes below to textView would make it a textArea that would not be editable.

android:lines="8"
android:maxLines="10"
android:minLines="6" // optional