How to display HTML in TextView?

Question

You need to use Html.fromHtml() to use HTML in your XML Strings. Simply referencing a String with HTML in your layout XML will not work.

This is what you should do in Java

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
    textView.setText(Html.fromHtml("<h2>Title</h2><br><p>Description here</p>", Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT));
} else { 
    textView.setText(Html.fromHtml("<h2>Title</h2><br><p>Description here</p>"));
}

And in Kotlin:

textView.text = if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
    Html.fromHtml(html, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT)
} else {
    Html.fromHtml(html)
}

setText(Html.fromHtml(bodyData)) is deprecated after api 24. Now you have to do this:

 if (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
      tvDocument.setText(Html.fromHtml(bodyData,Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY));
 } else {
      tvDocument.setText(Html.fromHtml(bodyData));
 }

Have a look on this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8558249/450148

It is pretty good too!!

<resource>
    <string name="your_string">This is an <u>underline</u> text demo for TextView.</string>
</resources>

It works only for few tags.

If you want to be able to configure it through xml without any modification in java code you may find this idea helpful. Simply you call init from constructor and set the text as html

public class HTMLTextView extends TextView {
    ... constructors calling init...
    private void init(){
       setText(Html.fromHtml(getText().toString()));
    }    
}

xml:

<com.package.HTMLTextView
android:text="@string/about_item_1"/>