Expandable Text in Android using Jetpack Compose

Last Updated : 06 Mar, 2025

Many applications display tons of textual data in the form of passages and have the feature of expanding or contracting it. Generally, 2-3 out of n lines of a passage are displayed along with “View More”, “Read More”, and “…” at the end. These appear like hyperlinks that upon click expand the text to full. In this article, we will show you how you could create an expandable text in Android using Jetpack Compose. Follow the below steps once the IDE is ready.

Step by Step Implementation

Step 1: Create a New Project in Android Studio

To create a new project in the Android Studio, please refer to How to Create a new Project in Android Studio with Jetpack Compose.

Note: Select Kotlin as the programming language.

Step 2: Create Long text in strings.xml

Navigate app > res > values > strings.xml and the following string or any other long string of your choice in the strings.xml file.

<resources>
    ...
    <string name="long_text">A computer science portal for geeks. It contains well written, well thought and well explained computer science and programming articles, quizzes and practice/competitive programming/company interview Questions.</string>
</resources>

Step 2: Working with the MainActivity.kt file

Go to the MainActivity.kt file and refer to the following code. Below is the code for the MainActivity.kt file. Comments are added inside the code to understand the code in more detail.

MainActivity.kt:

Kotlin

package com.geeksforgeeks.demo

import android.os.Bundle
import androidx.activity.ComponentActivity
import androidx.activity.compose.setContent
import androidx.compose.animation.animateContentSize
import androidx.compose.animation.core.*
import androidx.compose.foundation.clickable
import androidx.compose.foundation.interaction.MutableInteractionSource
import androidx.compose.foundation.layout.*
import androidx.compose.material3.*
import androidx.compose.runtime.*
import androidx.compose.ui.*
import androidx.compose.ui.graphics.*
import androidx.compose.ui.res.stringResource
import androidx.compose.ui.text.style.TextOverflow
import androidx.compose.ui.unit.dp
import com.geeksforgeeks.demo.ui.theme.*

class MainActivity : ComponentActivity() {
    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        setContent {
            DemoTheme(dynamicColor = false, darkTheme = false) {
                Surface(color = Color.White) {
                    ExpandableText()
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

@Composable
fun ExpandableText(modifier: Modifier = Modifier) {
    Column(Modifier.fillMaxSize(), horizontalAlignment = 
        Alignment.CenterHorizontally, verticalArrangement = Arrangement.Center) {

        // Creating a boolean value for storing expanded state
        var showMore by remember { mutableStateOf(false) }

        // Access long text from strings.xml
        val text = stringResource(R.string.long_text)
        Column(modifier = Modifier.padding(20.dp)) {

            // Creating a clickable modifier that consists text
            Column(modifier = Modifier
                .animateContentSize(animationSpec = tween(100))
                .clickable(
                    interactionSource = remember { MutableInteractionSource() },
                    indication = null
                ) { showMore = !showMore }) {

                // if showMore is true, the Text will expand
                // Else Text will be restricted to 3 Lines of display
                if (showMore) {
                    Text(text = text)
                } else {
                    Text(text = text, maxLines = 3, overflow = TextOverflow.Ellipsis)
                }
            }
        }
    }
}