How to Disable Text Selection in Android using Jetpack Compose?

In Android, a TextView is used to display text inside the activity on the screen. Similarly, in Jetpack Compose, a Text element is used to display text on the activity screen. By default, the text displayed in the Text element cannot be selected. To do so, the Text element has to be declared inside a SelectionContainer to make the text selectable. So, inside a SelectionContainer, if a Text element is declared, the text becomes selectable. However, we can disable text selection even inside a SelectionContainer upon a particular Text element if needed. So in this article, we will show you how you could Disable Text Selection in Selection Container in Android using Jetpack Compose. Follow the below steps once the IDE is ready.

Step by Step Implementation

Step 1: Create a New Project in Android Studio

To create a new project in Android Studio please refer to How to Create/Start a New Project in Android Studio. While choosing the template, select Empty Compose Activity. If you do not find this template, try upgrading the Android Studio to the latest version. We demonstrated the application in Kotlin, so make sure you select Kotlin as the primary language while creating a New Project.

Step 2: Working with the MainActivity.kt file

Go to the MainActivity.kt file and refer to the following code. Below is the code for the MainActivity.kt file. Comments are added inside the code to understand the code in more detail.

Kotlin

package com.geeksforgeeks.jcautocorrectm

import android.os.Bundle
import androidx.activity.ComponentActivity
import androidx.activity.compose.setContent
import androidx.compose.foundation.layout.*
import androidx.compose.foundation.text.KeyboardOptions
import androidx.compose.foundation.text.selection.DisableSelection
import androidx.compose.foundation.text.selection.LocalTextSelectionColors
import androidx.compose.foundation.text.selection.SelectionContainer
import androidx.compose.foundation.text.selection.TextSelectionColors
import androidx.compose.material.*
import androidx.compose.runtime.*
import androidx.compose.ui.Alignment
import androidx.compose.ui.Modifier
import androidx.compose.ui.graphics.Color
import androidx.compose.ui.text.input.KeyboardType
import androidx.compose.ui.tooling.preview.Preview
import androidx.compose.ui.unit.dp
import androidx.compose.ui.unit.sp
import com.geeksforgeeks.jcautocorrectm.ui.theme.JCAutoCorrectMTheme

class MainActivity : ComponentActivity() {
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContent {
            // Calling the composable function
            // to display element and its contents
            MainContent()
        }
    }
}

// Creating a composable
// function to display Top Bar
@Composable
fun MainContent() {
    Scaffold(
        topBar = { TopAppBar(title = { Text("GFG | Text Selection", color = Color.White) }, backgroundColor = Color(0xff0f9d58)) },
        content = { MyContent() }
    )
}

// Creating a composable function to
// create Selection container and Text inside it
// Calling this function as content in the above function
@Composable
fun MyContent(){

    // Creating a selection container
    SelectionContainer{
        Column(Modifier.fillMaxSize(), horizontalAlignment = Alignment.CenterHorizontally, verticalArrangement = Arrangement.Center) {

            // adding a space of height 100dp
            Text("Selectable Text 1", fontSize = 30.sp)

            // adding a space of height 100dp
            Spacer(modifier = Modifier.height(100.dp))

            // Creating a disableSelection
            DisableSelection {
                // Creating a text
                Text("Non-Selectable Text", fontSize = 30.sp)
            }

            // adding a space of height 100dp
            Spacer(modifier = Modifier.height(100.dp))

            // adding a space of height 100dp
            Text("Selectable Text 2", fontSize = 30.sp)
        }
    }
}

// For displaying preview in
// the Android Studio IDE emulator
@Preview(showBackground = true)
@Composable
fun DefaultPreview() {
    MainContent()
}

Output:

In the below recording, you can see that we are unable to select the second text.