Android: How to TOTALLY disable copy and paste function in Edittext

Question

I am quite new to Android developing area and recently I hv encountered a tough problem.

I was trying to make a Edittext which should NOT ALLOW user to copy content

Answer 1

You can totally hide "select all, copy and paste" menu and also "paste" function which pop up when simple tap on the cursor.

For that you have to create a custom EditText class. Here is an example...

// Custom EditText class
public class NoMenuEditText extends EditText
{
    private final Context context;

    /** This is a replacement method for the base TextView class' method of the same name. This 
    * method is used in hidden class android.widget.Editor to determine whether the PASTE/REPLACE popup
    * appears when triggered from the text insertion handle. Returning false forces this window
    * to never appear.
    * @return false
    */
    boolean canPaste()
    {
        return false;
    }

    /** This is a replacement method for the base TextView class' method of the same name. This method
    * is used in hidden class android.widget.Editor to determine whether the PASTE/REPLACE popup
    * appears when triggered from the text insertion handle. Returning false forces this window
    * to never appear.
    * @return false
    */
    @Override
    public boolean isSuggestionsEnabled()
    {
        return false;
    }

    public NoMenuEditText(Context context)
    {
        super(context);
        this.context = context;
        init();
    }

    public NoMenuEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs)
    {
        super(context, attrs);
        this.context = context;
        init();
    }

    public NoMenuEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle)
    {
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
        this.context = context;
        init();
    }

    private void init()
    {
        this.setCustomSelectionActionModeCallback(new ActionModeCallbackInterceptor());
        this.setLongClickable(false);
    }


    /**
    * Prevents the action bar (top horizontal bar with cut, copy, paste, etc.) from appearing
    * by intercepting the callback that would cause it to be created, and returning false.
    */
    private class ActionModeCallbackInterceptor implements ActionMode.Callback
    {
        private final String TAG = NoMenuEditText.class.getSimpleName();

        public boolean onCreateActionMode(ActionMode mode, Menu menu) { return false; }
        public boolean onPrepareActionMode(ActionMode mode, Menu menu) { return false; }
        public boolean onActionItemClicked(ActionMode mode, MenuItem item) { return false; }
        public void onDestroyActionMode(ActionMode mode) {}
    }
} 

Use this EditText in your layout. Now, it will not show any copy/paste menu. It will show only blue handle but when you click on that you will not get any pop up of paste option.

Hope this helps...