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

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?

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);

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

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).

If you are using Kotlin you can do the following using the android-ktx library

val title = SpannableStringBuilder()
        .append("Your big island ")
        .bold { append("ADVENTURE") } 

titleTextField.text = title

The bold is an extension function on SpannableStringBuilder. You can see the documentation here for a list of operations you can use.

Another example:

val ssb = SpannableStringBuilder()
            .color(green) { append("Green text ") }
            .append("Normal text ")
            .scale(0.5F) { append("Text at half size ") }
            .backgroundColor(green) { append("Background green") }

Where green is a resolved RGB color.

It is even possible to nest spans so you end up with something like an embedded DSL:

bold { underline { italic { append("Bold and underlined") } } }

You will need the following in your app module level build.gradle for it to work:

repositories {
    google()
}

dependencies {
    implementation 'androidx.core:core-ktx:0.3'
}

Here's an example that will look for all occurrences of a word (case insensitive), and color them red:

String notes = "aaa AAA xAaax abc aaA xxx";
SpannableStringBuilder sb = new SpannableStringBuilder(notes);
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("aaa", Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher m = p.matcher(notes);
while (m.find()){
	//String word = m.group();
	//String word1 = notes.substring(m.start(), m.end());
	
	sb.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.rgb(255, 0, 0)), m.start(), m.end(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
}
editText.setText(sb);

You can use a Spannable to give certain parts of a text certain aspects. I can look up an example if you want.

Ah, from right here on stackoverflow.

TextView TV = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.mytextview01); 
Spannable WordtoSpan = new SpannableString("I know just how to whisper, And I know just how to cry,I know just where to find the answers");        
WordtoSpan.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.BLUE), 15, 30, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
TV.setText(WordtoSpan);

If you want to use HTML, you need to use TextView.setText(Html.fromHtml(String htmlString))

If you want to do that often / repeatedly, you may have a look at a class (SpannableBuilder) I wrote, as Html.fromHtml() is not very efficient (it is using a big xml parsing machinery inside). It is described in this blog posting.

            String str1 = "If I forget my promise to ";
            String penalty = "Eat breakfast every morning,";
            String str2 = " then I ";
            String promise = "lose my favorite toy";
           

            String strb = "<u><b><font color='#081137'>"+ penalty +",</font></b></u>";
            String strc = "<u><b><font color='#081137'>"+ promise + "</font></b></u>";
            String strd = str1 +strb+ str2 + strc;
           tv_notification.setText(Html.fromHtml(strd));

or use this code:

    SpannableStringBuilder builder = new SpannableStringBuilder();
            SpannableString text1 = new SpannableString(str1);
            text1.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.silver)), 0, str1.length() - 1, 0);
            builder.append(text1);

            SpannableString text2 = new SpannableString(penalty);
            text2.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.midnight)), 0, penalty.length(), 0);
            text2.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(), 0, penalty.length(), 0);
            builder.append(text2);

            SpannableString text3 = new SpannableString(str2);
            text3.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.silver)),0, str2.length(), 0);
            builder.append(text3);


            SpannableString text4 = new SpannableString(promise);
            text4.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.midnight)), 0, promise.length(), 0);
            text4.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(),0, promise.length(), 0);
            builder.append(text4);

          tv_notification.setText(builder);

public static void setColorForPath(Spannable spannable, String[] paths, int color) {
    for (int i = 0; i < paths.length; i++) {
        int indexOfPath = spannable.toString().indexOf(paths[i]);
        if (indexOfPath == -1) {
            continue;
        }
        spannable.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(color), indexOfPath,
                indexOfPath + paths[i].length(), Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
    }
}

Using

Spannable spannable = new SpannableString("Your big island ADVENTURE");
Utils.setColorForPath(spannable, new String[] { "big", "ADVENTURE" }, Color.BLUE);

textView.setText(spannable);

I like to use SpannableStringBuilder by appending the different spans one by one, rather than calling setSpan by calculating the string lengths

as: (Kotlin code)

val amountSpannableString = SpannableString("₹$amount").apply {
  // text color
  setSpan(ForegroundColorSpan("#FD0025".parseColor()), 0, length, 0)
  // text size
  setSpan(AbsoluteSizeSpan(AMOUNT_SIZE_IN_SP.spToPx(context)), 0, length, 0)
  // font medium
  setSpan(TypefaceSpan(context.getString(R.string.font_roboto_medium)), 0, length, 0)
}

val spannable: Spannable = SpannableStringBuilder().apply {
  // append the different spans one by one
  // rather than calling setSpan by calculating the string lengths
  append(TEXT_BEFORE_AMOUNT)
  append(amountSpannableString)
  append(TEXT_AFTER_AMOUNT)
}

You can concatenate two or more Spans. This way is easier to color dynamic text using length value.

SpannableStringBuilder span1 = new SpannableStringBuilder("Android");
ForegroundColorSpan color1=new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.colorPrimary));
span1.setSpan(color1, 0, span1.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);

SpannableStringBuilder span2 = new SpannableStringBuilder("Love");
ForegroundColorSpan color2=new ForegroundColorSpan(getResources().getColor(R.color.colorSecondary));
span2.setSpan(color2, 0, span2.length(), Spannable.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);

Spanned concatenated=(Spanned) TextUtils.concat(span1," => ",span2);
    
SpannableStringBuilder result = new SpannableStringBuilder(concatenated);
    
TextView tv = (TextView) rootView.findViewById(R.id.my_texview);
tv.setText(result, TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);

Use this code its helpful

TextView txtTest = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.txtTest);
txtTest.setText(Html.fromHtml("This is <font color="#ff4343">Red</font> Color!"));

You can use extension function in Kotlin

fun CharSequence.colorizeText(
    textPartToColorize: CharSequence,
    @ColorInt color: Int
): CharSequence = SpannableString(this).apply {
    val startIndexOfText = this.indexOf(textPartToColorize.toString())
    setSpan(ForegroundColorSpan(color), startIndexOfText, startIndexOfText.plus(textPartToColorize.length), 0)
}

Usage:

val colorizedText = "this text will be colorized"
val myTextToColorize = "some text, $colorizedText continue normal text".colorizeText(colorizedText,ContextCompat.getColor(context, R.color.someColor))

Html.fromHtml is deprecated

Use HtmlCompat instead

HtmlCompat.fromHtml(html, HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY)

If you do not want to get in trouble on lower SDK version use SpannableStringBuilder with ForegroundColorSpan or BackgroundColorSpan as HtmlCompat.fromHtml color style does not applied on older Android version.