Disable/Remove floating label hint text in TextInputLayout XML

Question

This may seem counter-intuitive but is there a way to disable or remove the floating label hint in TextInputLayout? The reason I want to use TextInputLayout

Answer 1

There may be three ways to go about achieving this:

1 Set android:hint on TextInputLayout to a space _ character, and keep android:hint="This is my cool hint" set on the EditText.

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This works because TextInputLayout performs the following check before using the EditText's hint:

// If we do not have a valid hint, try and retrieve it from the EditText
if (TextUtils.isEmpty(mHint)) {
    setHint(mEditText.getHint());
    // Clear the EditText's hint as we will display it ourselves
    mEditText.setHint(null);
}

By setting android:hint=" ", if (TextUtils.isEmpty(mHint)) evaluates to false, and the EditText retains its hint.

2 Second option would be to subclass TextInputLayout and override its addView(View child, int index, ViewGroup.LayoutParams params) method:

public class CTextInputLayout extends TextInputLayout {

    public CTextInputLayout(Context context) {
        this(context, null);
    }

    public CTextInputLayout(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        this(context, attrs, 0);
    }

    public CTextInputLayout(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyleAttr) {
        super(context, attrs, defStyleAttr);
    }

    @Override
    public void addView(View child, int index, ViewGroup.LayoutParams params) {
        if (child instanceof EditText) {
            // cache the actual hint
            CharSequence hint = ((EditText)child).getHint();
            // remove the hint for now - we don't want TextInputLayout to see it
            ((EditText)child).setHint(null);
            // let `TextInputLayout` do its thing
            super.addView(child, index, params);
            // finally, set the hint back
            ((EditText)child).setHint(hint);
        } else {
            // Carry on adding the View...
            super.addView(child, index, params);
        }
    }
}

Then use your custom CTextInoutLayout instead of the one from the design support library:

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3 Third, and probably the most straight-forward way would be to make the following calls:

// remove hint from `TextInputLayout`
((TextInputLayout)findViewById(R.id.textContainer)).setHint(null);
// set the hint back on the `EditText`
// The passed `String` could also be a string resource
((EditText)findViewById(R.id.myEditText)).setHint("This is my cool hinttt.");