Is there an easy way to strike through text in an app widget?

2015 Update: Folks, this is for very old versions of Android. See other answers for modern solutions!

To strike through the entire text view, you can use a specific background image to simulate the strikethrough effect:

android:background="@drawable/bg_strikethrough"

Where the bg_strikethrough drawable is a 9-patch that keeps a solid line through the middle, growing either side, with however much padding you think is reasonable. I've used one like this:

(enlarged for clarity.. 1300% !)

That is my HDPI version, so save it (the first one http://i.stack.imgur.com/nt6BK.png) as res/drawable-hdpi/bg_strikethrough.9.png and the configuration will work as so:

Here is an extension for all you Kotlin folks

fun TextView.showStrikeThrough(show: Boolean) {
    paintFlags =
            if (show) paintFlags or Paint.STRIKE_THRU_TEXT_FLAG
            else paintFlags and Paint.STRIKE_THRU_TEXT_FLAG.inv()
}

Usage

textView.showStrikeThrough(true)

Limitation

Strikethroughs can only be the same color as the text

(i.e. Red text and blue strikethrough is not possible)

Make a drawable file, striking_text.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:state_pressed="false">
        <shape android:shape="line">
            <stroke android:width="1dp" android:color="@android:color/holo_red_dark" />
        </shape>
    </item>
</selector>

layout xml

 <TextView
            ....
            ....
            android:background="@drawable/striking_text"
            android:foreground="@drawable/striking_text"
            android:text="69$"
           />

If your min SDK below API level 23 just use the background or just put the background and foreground in the Textview then the android studio will show an error that says create a layout file for API >23 after that remove the android:foreground="@drawable/stricking_text" from the main layout

Output look like this:

try this code

textview.setText((Html.fromHtml("<strike>hello world!</strike>")));

For Lollipop and above. create a drawable

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<selector xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <item android:state_pressed="false">
        <shape android:shape="line">
            <stroke android:width="1dp"
                android:color="@color/onePlusRed" />
        </shape>
    </item>
</selector>

and use it as foreground.
android:foreground="@drawable/strike_through"

Android resources have pretty good HTML markup support
The below HTML elements are supported:

Bold: <b>, <em>
Italic: <i>, <cite>, <dfn>
25% larger text: <big>
20% smaller text: <small>
Setting font properties: <font face=”font_family“ color=”hex_color”>. Examples of possible font families include monospace, serif, and sans_serif.
Setting a monospace font family: <tt>
Strikethrough: <s>, <strike>, <del>
Underline: <u>
Superscript: <sup>
Subscript: <sub>
Bullet points: <ul>, <li>
Line breaks: <br>
Division: <div>
CSS style: <span style=”color|background_color|text-decoration”>
Paragraphs: <p dir=”rtl | ltr” style=”…”>

Note however that it's not rendered in android studio layouts preview. Last tested on Android Studio 3.3.1

For example, the Strikethrough will look like that:

<string name="cost"><strike>$10</strike> $5 a month</string>

Kotlin way

val tv = findViewById<View>(R.id.mytext) as TextView
tv.text = "This is strike-through"
tv.paintFlags = tv.paintFlags or Paint.STRIKE_THRU_TEXT_FLAG

I tried few options but, this works best for me:

String text = "<strike><font color=\'#757575\'>Some text</font></strike>";
textview.setText(Html.fromHtml(text));

cheers

You Can use data binding! In XML layout just do app:strike="@{true}"

@BindingAdapter("strike")
fun bindTextView(view: TextView, strike: Boolean) {
    if (strike) {
        view.paintFlags = view.paintFlags or Paint.STRIKE_THRU_TEXT_FLAG or Paint.ANTI_ALIAS_FLAG
    } else {
        view.paintFlags = 0 or Paint.ANTI_ALIAS_FLAG
    }
}