How can I avoid execution of onTextChanged in Android's EditText

The Source for AutoCompleteTextView shows that they set a boolean to say the text is being replaced by the block completion

         mBlockCompletion = true;
         replaceText(convertSelectionToString(selectedItem));
         mBlockCompletion = false;    

This is as good a way as any to achieve what you want to do. The TextWatcher then checks to to see if the setText has come via a completion and returns out of the method

 void doBeforeTextChanged() {
     if (mBlockCompletion) return;

Adding and removing the TextWatcher will be more time consuming for the application

You can check which View has the focus currently to distinguish between user and program triggered events.

EditText myEditText = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.myEditText);

myEditText.addTextChangedListener(new TextWatcher() {
    @Override
    public void onTextChanged(CharSequence s, int start, int before, int count) {

        if(myEditText.hasFocus()) {
            // is only executed if the EditText was directly changed by the user
        }
    }

    //...
});

Take a look here for a more detailled version of that answer.

Alternatively you can simply use mEditText.hasFocus() to distinguish between Text that human-changed or program-changed, this works fine for me:

@Override
public void onTextChanged(CharSequence charSequence, int i, int i2, int i3) {
    if (mEditText.hasFocus()) {
        // Do whatever
    }
}

Hope this helps!