android:ellipsize="end" and android:maxEms not working

Question

I added

android:ellipsize="end"
android:maxEms="8"
android:singleLine="true"

to my TextView with the intention of showing three dots at the end and max text limit of 8 but it's not working. It shows neither the dots nor any text limit.

Answer 1

Both of your attributes for adding 'the three dots effect' are correct

android:ellipsize="end"
android:singleLine="true"

but the effect happens only when the TextView does not have any free space on the screen to show the text.

To set the limit of the text in TextView you can use

android:maxLength="8"

but it doesn't add the three dots, and as far as I am aware you would have to do it manually.

Something like this

String text = "A bit longer text";
if (text.length() > 8) {
    text = text.substring(0, 8) + "...";
}

The android:maxEms is something else than previous, you can read more about it

What is meant by Ems? (Android TextView)