Making TextView scrollable on Android

You can either

1. surround the TextView by a ScrollView; or
2. set the Movement method to ScrollingMovementMethod.getInstance();.

In kotlin for making the textview scrollable

myTextView.movementMethod= ScrollingMovementMethod()

and also add in xml this property

    android:scrollbars = "vertical"

If you use Kotlin , in this way : XML

 <TextView
            android:id="@+id/tvMore"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:maxLines="3"
            android:scrollbars="vertical" />

Activity

tvMore.movementMethod = ScrollingMovementMethod()

yourtextView.setMovementMethod(new ScrollingMovementMethod());

you can scroll it now.

I know this is an older post, but this is how I am handling the issue on the Java side.

    // Allow textView to scroll
    tv.setSingleLine(true);
    tv.setHorizontallyScrolling(true);
    tv.setEllipsize(TextUtils.TruncateAt.MARQUEE);
    tv.setMarqueeRepeatLimit(-1); // Infinite
    // TextView must be 'selected'
    tv.setSelected(true);
    // Padding not necessary, but this helps so the text isn't right
    // up against the side of a screen/layout
    tv.setPadding(10, 0, 10, 0);

The code below creates an automatic horizontal scrolling textview:

While adding TextView to xml use

<TextView android:maxLines="1" 
          android:ellipsize="marquee"
          android:scrollHorizontally="true"/>

Set the following properties of TextView in onCreate()

tv.setSelected(true);
tv.setHorizontallyScrolling(true); 

I had this problem when I was using TextView inside the ScrollView. This solution has worked for me.

scrollView.setOnTouchListener(new View.OnTouchListener() {

            @Override
            public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {

                description.getParent().requestDisallowInterceptTouchEvent(false);

                return false;
            }
        });

        description.setOnTouchListener(new View.OnTouchListener() {

            @Override
            public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {

                description.getParent().requestDisallowInterceptTouchEvent(true);

                return false;
            }
        });

Put maxLines and scrollbars inside TextView in xml.

<TextView android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:scrollbars="vertical"
    android:maxLines="5" // any number of max line here.
    />

Then in java code.

textView.setMovementMethod(new ScrollingMovementMethod());

whenever you need to use the ScrollView as parent, And you also use the scroll movement method with TextView.

And When you portrait to landscape your device that time occur some issue. (like) entire page is scrollable but scroll movement method can't work.

if you still need to use ScrollView as parent or scroll movement method then you also use below desc.

If you do not have any problems then you use EditText instead of TextView

see below :

<EditText
     android:id="@+id/description_text_question"
     android:layout_width="match_parent"
     android:layout_height="wrap_content"
     android:background="@null"
     android:editable="false"
     android:cursorVisible="false"
     android:maxLines="6"/>

Here, the EditText behaves like TextView

And your issue will be resolved

Here is the answer in the wonderful and happy world of JetPack Compose :

LazyColumn {
        item {
            Text(
                text = "My Long Text"
            )
        }
    }

XML - You can use android:scrollHorizontally Attribute

Whether the text is allowed to be wider than the view (and therefore can be scrolled horizontally).

May be a boolean value, such as "true" or "false".

Prigramacaly - setHorizontallyScrolling(boolean)

Try this:

android:scrollbars = "vertical"

For a vertically or horizontally scrollable TextView some of the other answers help, but I needed to be able to scroll both ways.

What finally worked is a ScrollView with a HorizontalScrollView inside of it, and a TextView inside the HSV. It's very smooth and can easily go side to side or top to bottom in one swipe. It also only allows scrolling in one direction at a time so there's none of the jumping side to side while scrolling up or down.

An EditText with editing and cursor disabled works, but it feels terrible. Each attempt to scroll moves the cursor and it requires many swipes to go top to bottom or side to side in even a ~100-line file.

Using setHorizontallyScrolling(true) can work, but there's no similar method to allow vertical scrolling, and it doesn't work inside of a ScrollView as far as I can tell (just learning though, could be wrong).