Glow TextView in Android

By default Android doesn’t provide a simple way to add the glow to the text view or any other view, so to make our app more attractive and beautiful we can add the glow effect to our TextView. In order to do so, we can use many different external libraries. A sample GIF is given below to get an idea about what we are going to do in this article. Note that we are going to implement this project using the Java language. 

Approach

Step 1: Create a New Project

To create a new project in Android Studio please refer to How to Create/Start a New Project in Android Studio. Note that select Java as the programming language.

Step 2: Before going to the coding section first do some pre-task

Go to app -> res -> values -> colors.xml file and set the colors for the app.

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>

    <color name="colorPrimary">#0F9D58</color>
    <color name="colorPrimaryDark">#0F9D58</color>
    <color name="colorAccent">#05af9b</color>
    <color name="white">#ffffff</color>

</resources>

Go to Gradle Scripts > build.gradle (Module: app) section and import the following dependencies and click the “sync Now” on the above pop-up. 

// Adding glowtextview

implementation ‘com.riningan.widget:glowtextview:1.0’

Step 3: Designing the UI

In the activity_main.xml remove the default Text View and change the layout to Relative layout and add the GlowTextView and we also add 2 SeekBar to change the color and radius of the glow text view as shown below. Below is the code for the activity_main.xml file. 

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".MainActivity">

    <!-- Glow Text View -->
    <com.riningan.widget.GlowTextView
        android:id="@+id/glowTextView"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_centerInParent="true"
        android:padding="40dp"
        android:text="Hello world :)"
        android:textColor="@android:color/white"
        android:textSize="40dp"
        app:glowColor="@color/Green"
        app:glowRadius="16dp" />

    <!-- simple seek bar to change the glow of the GlowTextView -->
    <SeekBar
        android:id="@+id/seekBarGlow"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
        android:layout_marginBottom="80dp"
        android:max="100" />

    <!-- simple seek bar to change the color of the GlowTextView -->
    <SeekBar
        android:id="@+id/seekBarColor"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
        android:layout_marginBottom="120dp" />

</RelativeLayout>

Properties:

1. app:glowRadius: it is used to set the glow Radius [ default value 60f ]
2. app:glowColor: it is used to set the  glow Color [ default color value WHITE ]

Step 4: Coding Part

Open the MainActivity.java file and inside the class, we create an array of integer to store different colors ( which we use later to change the color of the GlowTextView ) as shown below

Java

// array of different colors
int[] colors={Color.RED,Color.GREEN,Color.BLACK,Color.CYAN,Color.DKGRAY,Color.GRAY,Color.LTGRAY,Color.BLUE,Color.WHITE,Color.YELLOW,Color.MAGENTA};

Now inside the onCreate() get the reference of the GlowTextView and 2 SeekBar and set the max of the color SeekBar to the colors.length – 1 as shown below.

Java

// getting Glow seekBar reference
SeekBar seekBarGlow =(SeekBar)findViewById(R.id.seekBarGlow);

// getting Color seekBar reference
SeekBar seekBarColor =(SeekBar)findViewById(R.id.seekBarColor);

// setting the max of seekBar to color length -1
seekBarColor.setMax(colors.length-1);

// getting glowTextView reference
GlowTextView  glowTextView =(GlowTextView)findViewById(R.id.glowTextView);

Now create a SeekBarChangeListener of both the SeekBar and inside the onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) set the GlowColor and GlowRadius value to the process as shown below

Java

// seekBar change listener for changing the glow radius
seekBarGlow.setOnSeekBarChangeListener(new SeekBar.OnSeekBarChangeListener() {
           @Override
           public void onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) {
               // change the glow radius of the glow text view
               glowTextView.setGlowRadius(progress);
           }

           @Override
           public void onStartTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

           }

           @Override
           public void onStopTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

           }
       });

        // seekBar change listener for changing color
        seekBarColor.setOnSeekBarChangeListener(new SeekBar.OnSeekBarChangeListener() {
            @Override
            public void onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) {
                // change the glow color  of the glow text view
                glowTextView.setGlowColor(colors[progress]);
            }

            @Override
            public void onStartTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

            }

            @Override
            public void onStopTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

            }
});

Below is the complete code of the MainActvity.java file.

Java

import android.graphics.Color;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.SeekBar;

import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;

import com.riningan.widget.GlowTextView;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    // array of different colors
    int[] colors = {Color.RED, Color.GREEN, Color.BLACK, Color.CYAN, Color.DKGRAY, Color.GRAY, Color.LTGRAY, Color.BLUE, Color.WHITE, Color.YELLOW, Color.MAGENTA};

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        // getting Glow seekBar reference
        SeekBar seekBarGlow = (SeekBar) findViewById(R.id.seekBarGlow);

        // getting Color seekBar reference
        SeekBar seekBarColor = (SeekBar) findViewById(R.id.seekBarColor);

        // setting the max of seekBar to color length -1
        seekBarColor.setMax(colors.length - 1);

        // getting glowTextView reference
        GlowTextView glowTextView = (GlowTextView) findViewById(R.id.glowTextView);


        // seekBar change listener for changing the glow radius
        seekBarGlow.setOnSeekBarChangeListener(new SeekBar.OnSeekBarChangeListener() {
            @Override
            public void onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) {
                // change the glow radius of the glow text view
                glowTextView.setGlowRadius(progress);
            }

            @Override
            public void onStartTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

            }

            @Override
            public void onStopTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

            }
        });

        // seekBar change listener for changing color
        seekBarColor.setOnSeekBarChangeListener(new SeekBar.OnSeekBarChangeListener() {
            @Override
            public void onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) {
                // change the glow color  of the glow text view
                glowTextView.setGlowColor(colors[progress]);
            }

            @Override
            public void onStartTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

            }

            @Override
            public void onStopTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

            }
        });
    }

}

Output: