How to display HTML in TextView?

You need to use Html.fromHtml() to use HTML in your XML Strings. Simply referencing a String with HTML in your layout XML will not work.

This is what you should do in Java

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
    textView.setText(Html.fromHtml("<h2>Title</h2><br><p>Description here</p>", Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT));
} else { 
    textView.setText(Html.fromHtml("<h2>Title</h2><br><p>Description here</p>"));
}

And in Kotlin:

textView.text = if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
    Html.fromHtml(html, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT)
} else {
    Html.fromHtml(html)
}

I know this question is old. Other answers here suggesting Html.fromHtml() method. I suggest you to use HtmlCompat.fromHtml() from androidx.core.text.HtmlCompat package. As this is backward compatible version of Html class.

Sample code:

import androidx.core.text.HtmlCompat;
import android.text.Spanned;
import android.widget.TextView;

String htmlString = "<h1>Hello World!</h1>";

Spanned spanned = HtmlCompat.fromHtml(htmlString, HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT);

TextView tvOutput = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.text_view_id);

tvOutput.setText(spanned);

By this way you can avoid Android API version check and it's easy to use (single line solution).

Created Kotlin extensions to convert html from String -

fun String?.toHtml(): Spanned? {
    if (this.isNullOrEmpty()) return null
    return HtmlCompat.fromHtml(this, HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT)
}

If you use androidx.* classes in your project, you should use HtmlCompat.fromHtml(text, flag).

Source of the method is:

@NonNull
    public static Spanned fromHtml(@NonNull String source, @FromHtmlFlags int flags) {
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 24) {
            return Html.fromHtml(source, flags);
        }
        //noinspection deprecation
        return Html.fromHtml(source);
    }

It is better to use HtmlCompat.fromHtml than Html.fromHtml as there is less code- only one line of code, and it's recommended way to use it.

simply use

checkBoxTextView.text =
        Html.fromHtml("<p><font color=#666666>I agree to</font><font color=#0173B7>  <b><u>Terms & Conditions</u></b></font><font color=#666666> and the <u></font><b><font color=#0173B7>Privacy Policy</font></u></b></font></p>")

Make a global method like:

public static Spanned stripHtml(String html) {
            if (!TextUtils.isEmpty(html)) {
                if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
                    return Html.fromHtml(html, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT);
                } else {
                    return Html.fromHtml(html);
                }
            }
            return null;
        }

You can also use it in your Activity/Fragment like:

text_view.setText(stripHtml(htmlText));

Whenever you write custom text view basic HTML set text feature will be get vanished form some of the devices.

So we need to do following addtional steps make is work

public class CustomTextView extends TextView {

    public CustomTextView(..) {
        // other instructions
        setText(Html.fromHtml(getText().toString()));
    }
}

Simply use:

String variable="StackOverflow";
textView.setText(Html.fromHtml("<b>Hello : </b>"+ variable));

public class HtmlTextView extends AppCompatTextView {

public HtmlTextView(Context context) {
    super(context);
    init();
}

private void init(){
    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
        setText(Html.fromHtml(getText().toString(), Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT));
    } else {
        setText(Html.fromHtml(getText().toString()));
    }
 }
}

update of answer above

Use below code to get the solution:

textView.setText(fromHtml("<Your Html Text>"))

Utitilty Method

public static Spanned fromHtml(String text)
{
    Spanned result;
    if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.N) {
        result = Html.fromHtml(text, Html.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY);
    } else {
        result = Html.fromHtml(text);
    }
    return result;
}

People have suggested subclass for TextView, WebView and all sorts of solutions. I wonder why nobody mentioned a simple binding adapter.

@BindingAdapter(value = ["htmlText"])
fun TextView.setHtmlText(string: String?) {
    text = HtmlCompat.fromHtml(string?:"", HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_COMPACT)
}

So your TextView xml will look like

<TextView
   ...
   htmlText="<p>Your <b>HTML</b> text</p>"
   ... />

May I suggest a somewhat hacky but still genius solution! I got the idea from this article and adapted it for Android. Basically you use a WebView and insert the HTML you want to show and edit in an editable div tag. This way when the user taps the WebView the keyboard appears and allows editing. They you just add some JavaScript to get back the edited HTML and voila!

Here is the code:

public class HtmlTextEditor extends WebView {

    class JsObject {
        // This field always keeps the latest edited text
        public String text;
        @JavascriptInterface
        public void textDidChange(String newText) {
            text = newText.replace("\n", "");
        }
    }

    private JsObject mJsObject;

    public HtmlTextEditor(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
        super(context, attrs);

        getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
        mJsObject = new JsObject();
        addJavascriptInterface(mJsObject, "injectedObject");
        setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient(){
            @Override
            public void onPageFinished(WebView view, String url) {
                super.onPageFinished(view, url);
                loadUrl(
                        "javascript:(function() { " +
                            "    var editor = document.getElementById(\"editor\");" +
                            "    editor.addEventListener(\"input\", function() {" +
                            "        injectedObject.textDidChange(editor.innerHTML);" +
                            "    }, false)" +
                            "})()");
            }
        });
    }

    public void setText(String text) {
        if (text == null) { text = ""; }

        String editableHtmlTemplate = "<!DOCTYPE html>" + "<html>" + "<head>" + "<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"initial-scale=1.0\" />" + "</head>" + "<body>" + "<div id=\"editor\" contenteditable=\"true\">___REPLACE___</div>" + "</body>" + "</html>";
        String editableHtml = editableHtmlTemplate.replace("___REPLACE___", text);
        loadData(editableHtml, "text/html; charset=utf-8", "UTF-8");
        // Init the text field in case it's read without editing the text before
        mJsObject.text = text;
    }

    public String getText() {
        return mJsObject.text;
    }
}

And here is the component as a Gist.

Note: I didn't need the height change callback from the original solution so that's missing here but you can easily add it if needed.

You can use simple Kotlin extension function like this:

fun TextView.setHtmlText(source: String) {
    this.text = HtmlCompat.fromHtml(source, HtmlCompat.FROM_HTML_MODE_LEGACY)
}

And usage:

textViewMessage.setHtmlText("Message: <b>Hello World</b>")

You can build valid HTML for Android TextView using the HtmlDsl library on Github: https://github.com/jaredrummler/HtmlDsl.

The library provides syntactic sugar to make the code more understandable and less error-prone by only supporting elements and attributes that are rendered by Android.

Example creating some HTML:

textView.setHtml {
    h3("Android Versions:")
    ul {
        li {
            a(href = "https://developer.android.com/about/versions/12/get") {
                +"Android 12 Beta"
            }
        }
        li("Android 11")
        li("Android 10")
        li("Pie")
        li("Oreo")
        li("Nougat")
        li("Marshmallow")
        li("Lollipop")
        // ...
    }

    small {
        sub {
            +"by "
            a {
                href = "https://github.com/jaredrummler"
                text = "Jared Rummler"
            }
        }
    }
}

Supported HTML elements for Android TextView:

<a href="...">
<b>
<big>
<blockquote>
<br>
<cite>
<dfn>
<div align="...">
<em>
<font color="..." face="...">
<h1>
<h2>
<h3>
<h4>
<h5>
<h6>
<i>
<img src="...">
<p>
<small>
<strike>
<strong>
<sub>
<sup>
<tt>
<u>
<ul>
<li>