Special characters in a TextView

Question

I want to show the "♫" character in an Android TextView, but it shows [] instead.

This is my code:

txtCatname.setText("♫");

How can I display this symbol correctly?

Answer 1

You can use an Unicode code: http://unicode-table.com/en/.

Such as:

txtCatname.setText("\u266b");

or alternatively use an iconic font, such as font awesome:
http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/

Use this alternative (or any other iconic font you like), in case this character isn't supported (not all Unicode characters are supported).

Answer 2

Try this:

String str = "♫";
byte spbyte[] = str.getBytes("UTF-8"); 
str = new String( spbyte,"UTF-8");
txtCatname.setText(str);

If it doesn't work, try this:

String str = "♫";
txtCatname.setText(Html.fromHtml(str));

Answer 3

If nothing else helps, you can either:

1. use a custom font (e.g. http://www.tutorialspoint.com/android/android_custom_fonts.htm or Add custom font for complete android application ) or

2. add an image: How to add image in a TextView text?

Answer 4

That is common when the source file is encoded as ANSI. Converting the source file as UTF-8 (without BOM) will likely solve the issue.

Answer 5

This seems pretty simple now:

• Simply go to unicode list and choose your unicode and copy go it.

• Go to strings.xml and paste it. This will paste the unicode character instead of it's code and use it in your xml as a normal string.

Hope this will help you.

Answer 6

Simply append the symbol as a string in your string.xml By adding double quotes to the special character.