Is it possible to have multiple styles inside a TextView?

Question

Is it possible to set multiple styles for different pieces of text inside a TextView?

For instance, I am setting the text as follows:

tv.setText(line         


        

Answer 1

It is more light weight to use a SpannableString instead of html markup. It helps me to see visual examples so here is a supplemental answer.

This is a single TextView.

// set the text
SpannableString s1 = new SpannableString("bold\n");
SpannableString s2 = new SpannableString("italic\n");
SpannableString s3 = new SpannableString("foreground color\n");
SpannableString s4 = new SpannableString("background color\n");
SpannableString s5 = new SpannableString("underline\n");
SpannableString s6 = new SpannableString("strikethrough\n");
SpannableString s7 = new SpannableString("bigger\n");
SpannableString s8 = new SpannableString("smaller\n");
SpannableString s9 = new SpannableString("font\n");
SpannableString s10 = new SpannableString("URL span\n");
SpannableString s11 = new SpannableString("clickable span\n");
SpannableString s12 = new SpannableString("overlapping spans\n");

// set the style
int flag = Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE;
s1.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD), 0, s1.length(), flag);
s2.setSpan(new StyleSpan(Typeface.ITALIC), 0, s2.length(), flag);
s3.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.RED), 0, s3.length(), flag);
s4.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(Color.YELLOW), 0, s4.length(), flag);
s5.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(), 0, s5.length(), flag);
s6.setSpan(new StrikethroughSpan(), 0, s6.length(), flag);
s7.setSpan(new RelativeSizeSpan(2), 0, s7.length(), flag);
s8.setSpan(new RelativeSizeSpan(0.5f), 0, s8.length(), flag);
s9.setSpan(new TypefaceSpan("monospace"), 0, s9.length(), flag);
s10.setSpan(new URLSpan("https://developer.android.com"), 0, s10.length(), flag);
s11.setSpan(new ClickableSpan() {
    @Override
    public void onClick(View widget) {
        Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Span clicked", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
    }
}, 0, s11.length(), flag);
s12.setSpan(new ForegroundColorSpan(Color.RED), 0, 11, flag);
s12.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(Color.YELLOW), 4, s12.length(), flag);
s12.setSpan(new UnderlineSpan(), 4, 11, flag);

// build the string
SpannableStringBuilder builder = new SpannableStringBuilder();
builder.append(s1);
builder.append(s2);
builder.append(s3);
builder.append(s4);
builder.append(s5);
builder.append(s6);
builder.append(s7);
builder.append(s8);
builder.append(s9);
builder.append(s10);
builder.append(s11);
builder.append(s12);

// set the text view with the styled text
textView.setText(builder);
// enables clicking on spans for clickable span and url span
textView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());

Further Study

• Explain the meaning of Span flags like SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE
• Android Spanned, SpannedString, Spannable, SpannableString and CharSequence
• Types of spans

This example was originally inspired from here.