Disabling of EditText in Android

Question

In my application, I have an EditText that the user only has Read access not Write access.

In code I set android:enabled="false".

Although the background of EditText changed to dark, when I click on it the keyboard pops up and I can change the text.

What should I set to disable EditText?

Answer 1

I believe the correct would be to set android:editable="false".

And if you wonder why my link point to the attributes of TextView, you the answer is because EditText inherits from TextView:

EditText is a thin veneer over TextView that configures itself to be editable.

Update:
As mentioned in the comments below, editable is deprecated (since API level 3). You should instead be using inputType (with the value none).

Answer 2

As android:editable="false" deprecated In xml

Use android:enabled="false" it's simple. Why use more code?

If you want in java class you can also use this programmatically

 editText.setEnabled(false);

Answer 3

There are multiple was how to achieve multiple levels of disabled.

• editText.setShowSoftInputOnFocus(false); and editText.setFocusable

prevents the EditText from showing keyboard - writing in some text. But cursor is still visible and user can paste in some text.

• editText.setCursorVisible(false)

hides the cursor. Not sure why would you want to do that tho. User can input text & paste.

• editText.setKeyListener(null)

I find this way most convenient. There is no way how user can input text, but widget still works with OnClickListener if you want to trigger action when user touches it

• editText.setEnabled(false);

completely disables EditText. It is literally 'read-only', user cannot input any text in it and (for example) OnClickListener doesn't work with it.

TextEdit documentation

Answer 4

In my case I needed my EditText to scroll text if no. of lines exceed maxLines when its disabled. This implementation worked perfectly for me.

private void setIsChatEditTextEditable(boolean value)
{
    if(value)
    {
        mEdittext.setCursorVisible(true);
        mEdittext.setSelection(chat_edittext.length());
       // use new EditText(getApplicationContext()).getKeyListener()) if required below
        mEdittext.setKeyListener(new AppCompatEditText(getApplicationContext()).getKeyListener());  
    }
    else
    {
        mEdittext.setCursorVisible(false);
        mEdittext.setKeyListener(null);
    }
}

Answer 5

As some answer mention it, if you disable the editText he become gray and if you set focusable false the cursor is displaying.

If you would like to do it only with xml this did the trick

       <YourFloatLabel
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content">

            <EditText
                android:id="@+id/view_ads_search_select"
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

            <FrameLayout
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="match_parent"
                android:focusable="true"
                android:clickable="true"/>  
       </YourFloatLabel>

I simply add a FrameLayout appear above the editText and set it focusable and clickable so the editText can't be click.