How to Make Substring of a TextView Clickable in Android?

In this article, we are going to implement a very important feature related to TextView. Here we are making part of a string or a substring to act as a substring. This feature is important while writing a blog because it may be possible that for certain points we want to redirect the user to a link. So here we are going to learn how to implement that feature. 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. 

Step by Step Implementation

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: Working with the activity_main.xml file

Navigate to the app > res > layout > activity_main.xml and add the below code to that file. Below is the code for the activity_main.xml file. 

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout
    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"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    tools:context=".MainActivity">

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/text_view"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="First Click THIS and then THIS "
        android:textColor="@color/black"
        android:textSize="20sp"
        app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf="parent"
        app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf="parent" />

</LinearLayout>

Step 3: Working with the MainActivity.java file

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

Java

import android.os.Bundle;
import android.text.SpannableString;
import android.text.Spanned;
import android.text.method.LinkMovementMethod;
import android.text.style.ClickableSpan;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.TextView;
import android.widget.Toast;

import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

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

        TextView textView = findViewById(R.id.text_view);
        String text = "First Click THIS and then THIS ";

        SpannableString ss = new SpannableString(text);

        // creating clickable span to be implemented as a link
        ClickableSpan clickableSpan1 = new ClickableSpan() {
            public void onClick(View widget) {
                Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, "First Clickable Text", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
            }
        };

        // creating clickable span to be implemented as a link
        ClickableSpan clickableSpan2 = new ClickableSpan() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View widget) {
                Toast.makeText(MainActivity.this, "Second Clickable Text", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
            }
        };

        // setting the part of string to be act as a link
        ss.setSpan(clickableSpan1, 12, 16, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);
        ss.setSpan(clickableSpan2, 26, 30, Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

        textView.setText(ss);
        textView.setMovementMethod(LinkMovementMethod.getInstance());
    }
}

Output: