Styling Android TextViews: Bold, Italic, and Underlined Text

In Android development, styling text views is a common requirement. This tutorial will cover how to set font styles to bold, italic, and underlined in an Android TextView.

Introduction to TextView Styling

Android’s TextView widget provides various attributes to style text, including android:textStyle for setting the font style to bold or italic. However, for more complex styling, such as underlining text, additional approaches are needed.

Using android:textStyle Attribute

To set a TextView’s content to bold or italic using XML layout files, you can use the android:textStyle attribute. For example:

<TextView
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:textStyle="bold|italic" />

This will set the text style to both bold and italic.

Using setTypeface Method

Alternatively, you can use the setTypeface method in your Java or Kotlin code to achieve the same effect:

TextView textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textview);
textView.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC);

Or in Kotlin:

val tv: TextView = findViewById(R.id.textViewOne)
tv.setTypeface(null, Typeface.BOLD_ITALIC)

Underlining Text

To underline text in a TextView, you can use the setPaintFlags method with the Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG flag. For example:

TextView textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.textview);
textView.setPaintFlags(textView.getPaintFlags() | Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG);

Or in Kotlin:

val tv: TextView = findViewById(R.id.textViewOne)
tv.paintFlags = tv.paintFlags or Paint.UNDERLINE_TEXT_FLAG

Using SpannableString

For more complex text styling, such as underlining a portion of the text, you can use a SpannableString. Here’s an example:

String tempString = "Copyright";
TextView text = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.text);
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);
text.setText(spanString);

This will set the text to bold, italic, and underlined.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we covered various ways to style Android TextViews, including using the android:textStyle attribute, setTypeface method, and setPaintFlags method. We also explored the use of SpannableString for more complex text styling. By following these approaches, you can create visually appealing and engaging user interfaces in your Android apps.