Android EditText listener for cursor position change

You can actually listen to selection changes without subclassing an EditText. It's a little more complicated but still manageable. To do it you need to add a SpanWatcher to a text and handle changes of selection spans.

final SpanWatcher watcher = new SpanWatcher() {
  @Override
  public void onSpanAdded(final Spannable text, final Object what,
      final int start, final int end) {
    // Nothing here.
  }

  @Override
  public void onSpanRemoved(final Spannable text, final Object what, 
      final int start, final int end) {
    // Nothing here.
  }

  @Override
  public void onSpanChanged(final Spannable text, final Object what, 
      final int ostart, final int oend, final int nstart, final int nend) {
    if (what == Selection.SELECTION_START) {
      // Selection start changed from ostart to nstart. 
    } else if (what == Selection.SELECTION_END) {
      // Selection end changed from ostart to nstart. 
    }
  }
};

editText.getText().setSpan(watcher, 0, 0, Spanned.SPAN_INCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE);

Just subclass or extend the class EditText and add the following code to the newly create class:

 @Override 
 protected void onSelectionChanged(int selStart, int selEnd) {
        // Do ur task here.
    }

Don't forget to add constructors to the subclass. :)

I debugged a related problem across different versions of Android (feel free to comment on your findings and I'll add them to the list).

Summary of findings:

---

4.1.6 (Samsung device)

onSelectionChanged() gets called on TEXT EDITS only.

---

4.0.6 (HTC Device)

4.0.4 (reported by user Arch1tect on Samsung Note 1 device)

onSelectionChanged() gets called on cursor changes (clicks, moves etc) but NOT on Text Edits.

---

In the cases above where you are not informed of the section changes (text edits in some versions of Android), you will have to do that using a TextWatcher, for example in the afterTextChanged() method.

if anyone is still looking for a solution that does not Subclass the EditText:

(Code is in kotlin)

    editText.setAccessibilityDelegate(object : View.AccessibilityDelegate() {
        override fun sendAccessibilityEvent(host: View?, eventType: Int) {
            super.sendAccessibilityEvent(host, eventType)
            if (eventType == AccessibilityEvent.TYPE_VIEW_TEXT_SELECTION_CHANGED){
                // here you can access selection of the editText 
                // with `editText.selectionStart`
                // and `editText.selectionEnd``
            }
        }
    })