BetterLinkMovementMethod

When android:autoLink="all" or Linkify.addLinks(textView, Linkify.ALL) is used to add links to web URLs, phone-numbers, map addresses or email addresses in a TextView, Android uses a class known as LinkMovementMethod that handles highlighting links when they're focused and dispatching an Intent when they're clicked.

BetterLinkMovementMethod improves over LinkMovementMethod, by fixing its flaws:

• No support for custom URL click listeners. For eg., phone numbers always show up in the dialer when clicked and there's no way to manually handle the click.
• Incorrect calculation of touch areas for links, resulting in ghost touch areas (Example video)
• Unreliable highlighting of links (Example video)

A detailed explanation of why (and when) you should use BetterLinkMovementMethod can be read on my blog: http://saket.me/better-url-handler-textview-android/

Usage

BetterLinkMovementMethod is designed to be a drop-in replacement for LinkMovementMethod:

repositories {
  jcenter()
}

dependencies {
  implementation 'me.saket:better-link-movement-method:2.2.0'
}

val textView = findViewById(...)
textView.movementMethod = BetterLinkMovementMethod.getInstance()

Click listeners can be registered by creating a unique instance of BetterLinkMovementMethod for each TextView:

textView.movementMethod = BetterLinkMovementMethod.newInstance().apply {
  setOnLinkClickListener { textView, url ->
    // Handle click or return false to let the framework handle this link.
    true
  }
  setOnLinkLongClickListener { textView, url ->
    // Handle long-click or return false to let the framework handle this link.
    true
  }
}

Sample

You can find sample APKs on the releases page to see BetterLinkMovementMethod in action.

License

Copyright 2018 Saket Narayan.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.