android - change font for editText hint

Question

Is it possible to change the font for the hint displayed in the EditText field? I want to set the font in the xml itself.

Answer 1

You can change it with a SpannableString and a Custom TypefaceSpan.

First, create a Custom TypefaceSpan class:

public class CustomTypefaceSpan extends TypefaceSpan {
    private final Typeface mNewType;

    public CustomTypefaceSpan(Typeface type) {
        super("");
        mNewType = type;
    }

    public CustomTypefaceSpan(String family, Typeface type) {
        super(family);
        mNewType = type;
    }

    @Override
    public void updateDrawState(TextPaint ds) {
        applyCustomTypeFace(ds, mNewType);
    }

    @Override
    public void updateMeasureState(TextPaint paint) {
        applyCustomTypeFace(paint, mNewType);
    }

    private static void applyCustomTypeFace(Paint paint, Typeface tf) {
        int oldStyle;
        Typeface old = paint.getTypeface();
        if (old == null) {
            oldStyle = 0;
        } else {
            oldStyle = old.getStyle();
        }

        int fake = oldStyle & ~tf.getStyle();
        if ((fake & Typeface.BOLD) != 0) {
            paint.setFakeBoldText(true);
        }

        if ((fake & Typeface.ITALIC) != 0) {
            paint.setTextSkewX(-0.25f);
        }

        paint.setTypeface(tf);
    }
}

Then just set the TypefaceSpan to a SpannableString:

TypefaceSpan typefaceSpan = new CustomTypefaceSpan(typeface);
SpannableString spannableString = new SpannableString(hintText);

spannableString.setSpan(typefaceSpan, 0, spannableString.length(), Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

And finally just set the hint of your EditText:

mEditText.setHint(spannableString);