Glow TextView in Android

Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025

By default Android doesn't provide a simple way to add the glow to the text view or any other view, so to make our app more attractive and beautiful we can add the glow effect to our TextView. In order to do so, we can use many different external libraries. A sample GIF is given below to get an idea about what we are going to do in this article. Note that we are going to implement this project using the Java language. 

Step-by-Step Implementation of Glow TextView

Step 1: Create a New Project

To create a new project in Android Studio please refer to How to Create/Start a New Project in Android Studio.

Note: Select Java as the programming language.

Step 2: Before going to the coding section first do some pre-task

Go to app -> res -> values -> colors.xml file and set the colors for the app.

colors.xml 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>

    <color name="colorPrimary">#0F9D58</color>
    <color name="colorPrimaryDark">#0F9D58</color>
    <color name="colorAccent">#05af9b</color>
    <color name="white">#ffffff</color>

</resources>


Go to Gradle Scripts > build.gradle (Module: app) section and import the following dependencies and click the “sync Now” on the above pop-up. 

// Adding glowtextview

implementation 'com.riningan.widget:glowtextview:1.0'

Step 3: Designing the UI

In the activity_main.xml remove the default Text View and change the layout to Relative layout and add the GlowTextView and we also add 2 SeekBar to change the color and radius of the glow text view as shown below. Below is the code for the activity_main.xml file. 

activity_main.xml 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    tools:context=".MainActivity">

    <!-- Glow Text View -->
    <com.riningan.widget.GlowTextView
        android:id="@+id/glowTextView"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_centerInParent="true"
        android:padding="40dp"
        android:text="Hello world :)"
        android:textColor="@android:color/white"
        android:textSize="40sp"
        app:glowColor="@color/colorPrimary"
        app:glowRadius="16dp" />

    <!-- SeekBar to adjust the glow intensity -->
    <SeekBar
        android:id="@+id/seekBarGlow"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"
        android:layout_marginBottom="80dp"
        android:max="100" />

    <!-- SeekBar to change the glow color -->
    <SeekBar
        android:id="@+id/seekBarColor"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_above="@id/seekBarGlow"
        android:layout_marginBottom="40dp"
        android:max="100" />

</RelativeLayout>

Properties:

  1. app:glowRadius: it is used to set the glow Radius [ default value 60f ]
  2. app:glowColor: it is used to set the  glow Color [ default color value WHITE ]

Step 4: Main Activity of the Application

Open the MainActivity.java file and inside the class, we create an array of integer to store different colors ( which we use later to change the color of the GlowTextView ) as shown below

Java 
// array of different colors
int[] colors={Color.RED,Color.GREEN,Color.BLACK,Color.CYAN,Color.DKGRAY,Color.GRAY,Color.LTGRAY,Color.BLUE,Color.WHITE,Color.YELLOW,Color.MAGENTA};


Now inside the onCreate() get the reference of the GlowTextView and 2 SeekBar and set the max of the color SeekBar to the colors.length - 1 as shown below.

Java 
// Getting Glow seekBar reference
SeekBar seekBarGlow = findViewById(R.id.seekBarGlow);

// Getting Color seekBar reference
SeekBar seekBarColor = findViewById(R.id.seekBarColor);

// Setting the max of seekBar to color length - 1
seekBarColor.setMax(colors.length - 1);

// Getting GlowTextView reference
GlowTextView glowTextView = findViewById(R.id.glowTextView);


Now create a SeekBarChangeListener of both the SeekBar and inside the onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) set the GlowColor and GlowRadius value to the process as shown below

Java 
// seekBar change listener for changing the glow radius
seekBarGlow.setOnSeekBarChangeListener(new SeekBar.OnSeekBarChangeListener() {
           @Override
           public void onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) {
               // change the glow radius of the glow text view
               glowTextView.setGlowRadius(progress);
           }

           @Override
           public void onStartTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

           }

           @Override
           public void onStopTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

           }
       });

        // seekBar change listener for changing color
        seekBarColor.setOnSeekBarChangeListener(new SeekBar.OnSeekBarChangeListener() {
            @Override
            public void onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) {
                // change the glow color  of the glow text view
                glowTextView.setGlowColor(colors[progress]);
            }

            @Override
            public void onStartTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

            }

            @Override
            public void onStopTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {

            }
});


Below is the complete code of the MainActvity.java file.

MainActivity.java 
import android.graphics.Color;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.SeekBar;

import androidx.appcompat.app.AppCompatActivity;

import com.riningan.widget.GlowTextView;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    // Array of different colors
    private int[] colors = {
        Color.RED, Color.GREEN, Color.BLACK, Color.CYAN, Color.DKGRAY, Color.GRAY, 
        Color.LTGRAY, Color.BLUE, Color.WHITE, Color.YELLOW, Color.MAGENTA
    };

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        // Getting GlowTextView reference
        GlowTextView glowTextView = findViewById(R.id.glowTextView);
        
        // Setting default values
        glowTextView.setGlowRadius(16); // Set initial glow radius
        glowTextView.setGlowColor(colors[0]); // Set initial glow color

        // Getting Glow seekBar reference
        SeekBar seekBarGlow = findViewById(R.id.seekBarGlow);
        seekBarGlow.setProgress(16); // Set initial progress

        // Getting Color seekBar reference
        SeekBar seekBarColor = findViewById(R.id.seekBarColor);
        seekBarColor.setMax(colors.length - 1);

        // SeekBar change listener for changing the glow radius
        seekBarGlow.setOnSeekBarChangeListener(new SeekBar.OnSeekBarChangeListener() {
            @Override
            public void onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) {
                // Change the glow radius of the GlowTextView
                glowTextView.setGlowRadius(progress);
            }

            @Override
            public void onStartTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {
                // Optional: Do something when touch starts
            }

            @Override
            public void onStopTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {
                // Optional: Do something when touch stops
            }
        });

        // SeekBar change listener for changing color
        seekBarColor.setOnSeekBarChangeListener(new SeekBar.OnSeekBarChangeListener() {
            @Override
            public void onProgressChanged(SeekBar seekBar, int progress, boolean fromUser) {
                // Change the glow color of the GlowTextView
                glowTextView.setGlowColor(colors[progress]);
            }

            @Override
            public void onStartTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {
                // Optional: Do something when touch starts
            }

            @Override
            public void onStopTrackingTouch(SeekBar seekBar) {
                // Optional: Do something when touch stops
            }
        });
    }
}

Output:

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Article Tags:
Android
Android-Animation

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