Creating A Digital Clock Widget With A Custom Font

Question

I'm trying to create a digital clock widget with a custom font. And this has proven to be the biggest challenge of my Android experience. (Thought it would be as simple as tc.setTypeFace("whatever") and be done with it)

The best way seems to be scratch the TextClock and use an ImageView and pass a Bitmap to it using a custom AlarmManager to create a new image for the view each second.

Before I get into the Bitmap generation, I practiced on a simple TextView using this tutorial Alarm Manager Widget

My problem is I can't this to update every second. I use am.setRepeating(AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP , System.currentTimeMillis()+1000, 1000, pi); but it still only updates it every minute or so (not at the top of every minute though). I think this has something to do with the way more recent OS (Kitkat, Lollipop) handle AlarmManagers.

My questions are:

1. Is this the right way to go about doing this? If not, please explain what I should do.

2. How can I get the widget to update every second?

Oidea

As a side note, there is a time tick broadcast that goes out every minute (if my memory doesn't betray me its what TextClock uses under the hood) developer.android.com/reference/android/content/… – Brat

Answer 1

I had the same problem... You have 2 options as I know till now:

1. The easiest - If you are using API level 16 or higher you can simply add android:fontFamily="sans-serif-thin" attribute for example in your xml file. Works like a charm!

This is my TextView:

<TextView
   android:id="@+id/Time"
   android:layout_width="match_parent"
   android:layout_height="wrap_content"
   android:ellipsize="none"
   android:fontFamily="sans-serif-thin"
   android:gravity="center_vertical|center_horizontal"
   android:includeFontPadding="false"
   android:singleLine="true"
   android:text="12:01"
   android:textColor="#fff"
   android:textSize="80sp" />

And this is how it looks like:

The only disadvantage of this method is that there isn't large selection of system fonts you can use.

2. The hard way is just to use your own Class, witch extends the TextView object like that and define it instead normal TextView in your xml file. I do not recommend it because it is possible to appear bugs.

Edit: For updating the widget every minute - you need to start a Service which can update your clock each minute (or second if you want). Check this example too.

Owades

This does not answer the question about how to update the widget every minute. – Hullabaloo

I need to use my own font, not the built in ones. So option 1 can be disregarded. In option 2, the "that" hyperlink you made leads to nothing? Was there supposed to be an example there? I look deeper into the sample code you provided too. You say you don' recommend it, but it sounds like it's my only choice. What kind of bugs are you referring to? – Oidea

The link was wrong, sorry for that. It is fixed. I have not tested enough this way, so I can not guarantee whether it is working fine without bugs. – Owades

What it be possible to just extend the class of a TextClock? – Oidea

TextClock requiers API level 17 and higher. – Owades

As Nikolai said that you could use TextClock , but if you want to use the same below 17 you could go for this link. And use the following code to give your custom font. myTextClock.setTypeface(Typeface.createFromAsset(getAssets(), "fonts/font.ttf")); – Supportive

After a lot of tests. The correct way seems to be using a service to update a bitmap every minute. The example you provided @NikolaiHristov was a great help! – Oidea

Answer 2

Use this link to get Textclock below API level 17. You could use .setTypeface(Typeface.createFromAsset(getAssets(),fonts/font.ttf")); with it.

Supportive

You can't use getAssets in a widget – Oidea

You could find the view by id in activity or fragment, and after that use .setTypeface(Typeface.createFromAsset(getAssets(),fonts/font.ttf")). As TextClock is sub class of the TextView. – Supportive

With widgets you have to use RemoteViews. And remoteviews have no way of setting typeface – Oidea

Answer 3

For API 17 or higher to customize fonts, you need to download .ttf file for any fonts you want then create a directory assets/fonts/ then save your fonts

Typeface fonttype
fonttype = Typeface.createFromAsset(getActivity().getAssets(), "fonts/robotoregular.ttf");
textclock.setTypeface(fonttype);

Mintz

You can't do this in a widget – Oidea