How to align the text inside the TextView in Android?

Question

I have a multiline TextView in Android. It is a child of a LinearLayout. It is already centered horizontally and I also want to have the text inside it centered.

Here's what I have now:

_ _ _ _ _ _| aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  
_ _ _ _ _ _| aaaaaaaa  
_ _ _ _ _ _| aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

What I want is:

_ _ _ _ _ _| aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  
_ _ _ _ _ _|       aaaaaaaa  
_ _ _ _ _ _|     aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Where:

_ _ _ _ = the space on the side of the TextView

| = the TextView edge

See detail explanation of gravity http://stackoverflow.com/a/36981904/3496570 — Zar E Ahmer, May 02 '16 at 11:59
Use `android:textAlignment="center"` see the detail solution here https://stackoverflow.com/a/56453101/2380114 — Chathura Wijesinghe, Jun 11 '19 at 01:33
Why do I feel that @Chathura Wijesinghe answered the real question? Got my upvote! — ramireeez, Nov 21 '19 at 11:35
unfortunately, it was deleted by @bhargav-rao . the same solution I used for most off the apps. — Chathura Wijesinghe, Nov 22 '19 at 01:58

score 173 · Accepted Answer · edited May 03 '14 at 21:07

173

Did you try the gravity attribute on the TextView ?

  android:gravity="center"

And make sure to use android:gravity and not android:layout_gravity.

edited May 03 '14 at 21:07

Alexander Pacha

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answered Jun 19 '12 at 07:15

Ovidiu Latcu

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18

Make sure to use android:gravity and not android:layout_gravity. This just cost me 30 min. – Alexander Pacha Dec 13 '12 at 10:33
1

Thank you very much @AlexanderPacha This should be added to the answer as I also got confused – Alfergon May 03 '14 at 15:38
Miraculous! I wonder what the heck android:textAlignment is supposed to do? But not enough to actually dig for it. This works! – Robin Davies Mar 14 '19 at 00:48

score 15 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 22 '15 at 21:04

15

android:gravity="center_horizontal" should do the trick.

More information could be found here or here.

edited Jul 22 '15 at 21:04

030

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answered Jun 19 '12 at 07:16

barrel

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 07 '17 at 13:15

2

Yes, use android:gravity attribute to change the position of data inside views.

answered Jun 07 '17 at 13:15

Bharat Singh

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score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 14 '20 at 13:29

2

The gravity attribute is the update to Alignment. Gravity is available in the attributes inspector as well as being able to do;

android:gravity="center"

answered Sep 14 '20 at 13:29

Zack Amin

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 28 '21 at 09:42

1

If you just want to align your text in textView then textAlignment is better option then gravity.

Add android:textAlignment="center" for Center

Add android:textAlignment="textStart" for Left

Add android:textAlignment="textEnd" for Right

answered Jul 28 '21 at 09:42

Pranav P

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score -1 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 13 '18 at 14:41

Make the text (which you want to set into TextView) in strings.xml as following :

<string name="content">
<center>Your text goes here.</center>
</string>

and in TextView add following attribute:

<TextView
...
android:text="@string/content"/>

It will center the text into TextView horizontally.

How to align the text inside the TextView in Android?

6 Answers6