android – Select + copy text in a TextView?

android:textIsSelectable works (at least in ICS – I haven’t yet checked in earlier versions)

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/deviceIdTV"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:textIsSelectable="true"
    android:text="" />

Text View needs to be enabled, focusable, longClickable and textIsSelectable

<TextView
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text=""
    android:id="@+id/pwTextView"
    android:enabled="true"
    android:textIsSelectable="true"
    android:focusable="true"
    android:longClickable="true" />

I think I have a better solution.
Just call
registerForContextMenu(yourTextView);

and your TextView will be registered for receiving context menu events.

Then override onCreateContextMenu in your Activity

@Override
public void onCreateContextMenu(ContextMenu menu, View v, ContextMenuInfo menuInfo) {
    //user has long pressed your TextView
    menu.add(0, v.getId(), 0, "text that you want to show in the context menu - I use simply Copy");

    //cast the received View to TextView so that you can get its text
    TextView yourTextView = (TextView) v;

    //place your TextView's text in clipboard
    ClipboardManager clipboard = (ClipboardManager) getSystemService(CLIPBOARD_SERVICE); 
    clipboard.setText(yourTextView.getText());
}

Hope this helps you and anyone else looking for a way to copy text from a TextView

textview1.setTextIsSelectable(true);

This will enable user to select and copy text on long clicking or as we do usually

I’m trying to implement the same, and your question helped me to set my editext layout correctly. So Thanks! 🙂

Then I realized, that the highlight will actually be visible if the cursor is on.
But I just like you do not want to see a cursor before long clicking on the text, so I hide the cursor in the layout.xml file just like you, and added an eventlistener for long click and display the cursor only when a selection starts.

So add the listener in your Activity in the onCreate section:

public TextView htmltextview;

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main);

    ...

    htmltextview.setOnLongClickListener(new OnLongClickListener(){

        public boolean onLongClick(View v) {
            htmltextview.setCursorVisible(true);
            return false;
        }
    });

}

And voilá, no cursor at the beginning, and if you long-click, the cursor appears with the selection boundaries.

I hope I could help.

Cheers,
fm

I was also trying to do something similar but still needed a custom approach with manipulation of highlighting of text in TextView. I triggered highlight and copying on LongClick action.

This is how I managed using SpannableString:

SpannableString highlightString = new SpannableString(textView.getText());
highlightString.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(ContextCompat.getColor(getActivity(), R.color.gray))
            , 0, textView.getText().length(), Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_INCLUSIVE);
textView.setText(highlightString);
copyToClipboard(urlToShare);

and the copy function:

public void copyToClipboard(String copyText) {
    ClipboardManager clipboard = (ClipboardManager) getActivity().getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
    ClipData clip = ClipData.newPlainText("url", copyText);
    clipboard.setPrimaryClip(clip);
    Toast toast = Toast.makeText(getActivity(), "Link is copied", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT);
    toast.show();
}

I hope it’s helpful for someone who ends up on this question 🙂

Using Kotlin Programmatically

button.setTextIsSelectable(true)

Or, add a Kotlin property extension

var TextView.selectable
    get() = isTextSelectable
    set(value) = setTextIsSelectable(value)

Then call

textview.selectable = true
// or
if (textview.selectable) { ...

Using Xml

Add this to your <TextView>

android:textIsSelectable="true"

NOTE: All of these require android:enabled="true" and android:focusable="true", which are the default values for a TextView.

Just use this simple library:
GitHub: Selectable TextView