Why is my Button text forced to ALL CAPS on Lollipop?

Question

In my app "Tide Now WA" which I recently tested for compatibility using the new Nexus 9 tablet (Lollipop - API 21).

It writes some button text. This app writes the text correctly using Android 2.3 and Android 4.0. I.e. mixed capital and lower case letters.

When same app is run on my Nexus 9 all the letters in the text are capitalized.

FWIW my manifest contains the following statement:

uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="10" android:targetSdkVersion="14"

Can I fix this in my code or is it a bug in the O.S. thanks

Solution 1

This is fixable in the application code by setting the button's TransformationMethod, e.g.

mButton.setTransformationMethod(null);

Solution 2

I don't have idea why it is happening but there 3 trivial attempts to make:

1. Use android:textAllCaps="false" in your layout-v21

2. Programmatically change the transformation method of the button. mButton.setTransformationMethod(null);

3. Check your style for Allcaps

Note: public void setAllCaps(boolean allCaps), android:textAllCaps are available from API version 14.

Solution 3

Here's what I did in my values/themes.xml

    <style name="AppTheme" parent="Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar">
        <item name="buttonStyle">@style/MyButton</item>
    </style>

    <style name="MyButton" parent="Widget.AppCompat.Button">
        <item name="android:textAllCaps">false</item>
    </style>

Solution 4

Set android:textAllCaps="false". If you are using an appcompat style, make sure textAllCaps comes before the style. Otherwise the style will override it. For example:

android:textAllCaps="false"
style="@style/Base.TextAppearance.AppCompat"

Solution 5

add this line in style

    <item name="android:textAllCaps">false</item>

View more solutions

Comments

[user1644002]

#1 made no difference. Not sure how to do #3, have no styles? Now trying #2.

[user1644002]

yes, adding this: btn[i].setTransformationMethod(null); makes it work thanks

[user1644002]

I am accepting Nikola's answer as the solution, but want to point out the other part of the questions is that as provided by alanv, who explained the why in the comments above.

[Adam]

That's great to know. If there a site which lists all of these defaulted values per android version?

[patrickjason91]

Worked for me too, used the programmatical method since textAllCaps XML attr is only supported API > 14. thanks!

[paulgavrikov]

That is a very bad attempt, just create styles for your buttons, one in values-21 that has allCaps false. Falling back to an older theme (here a Holo Theme) makes your app uglier and more inconsistent to the user.

[Someone Somewhere]

I used <item name="android:textAllCaps">false</item> in my style definition

[Someone Somewhere]

I agree, it's great to follow design guidelines... until the button text no longer fits in the button

[Vfleitao]

Worked like a charm but on my case I had to do like: <style name="textAppearanceButton" parent="@android:style/TextAppearance.Material.Widget.Button‌​"> <item name="android:textAllCaps">false</item> </style>

[Glenn Maynard]

I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY'D MAKE THIS THE DEFAULT

[QAMAR]

This is default in material theme, as it suits nature of material design

[bharal]

google should just stop talking about styles - i wasn't aware that there were ppl crying and sobbing in the streets because of lowercase buttons!

[CommonsWare]

For pre-API Level 14 support, you can use <item name="textAllCaps">false</item>.

[user3833732]

Very reluctantly i tried #2, And it was a mind boggling SUCCESS!!

[Bimde]

1. Works perfectly when adding it to the button's xml directly

[user2808624]

This applies only to Widget.AppCompat.Button. The more general answer is given by Ashish Chaugule below, i.e. adding directly <item name="android:textAllCaps">false</item> to the theme-style. (Although the questions was originally asked especially for buttons, I think if allCaps is not wanted for buttons, it is also not wanted for menu-items, actions, etc.)

[Vasily Kabunov]

Didn't work for me. Became to work when I changed buttonStyle to android:buttonStyle

[meyasir]

In XML android:textAllCaps="false" (I'm Using android studio 3.0)

[eric]

poor people stuck in the square box of material design

[Native_Mobile_Arch_Dev]

For Kotlin, the syntax is: mButton.transformationMethod = null

[Nagaraj Alagusundaram]

Today I faced this and I also confirm that this solution works.

[Yi Xiang Chong]

Very useful answer. Thank you