How to draw text on canvas?

You will have to use the drawText method of the Canvas class.

Paint paint = new Paint(); canvas.drawPaint(paint); paint.setColor(Color.BLACK); paint.setTextSize(16); canvas.drawText("My Text", x, y, paint); 

Here's the relevant documentation about it:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/Canvas.html#drawText(java.lang.String, float, float, android.graphics.Paint)

There used to be another answer here that got deleted because it was a link only. The original link is here. The code is basically the same, but I took out the non text drawing portions and also scaled up the sizes to work better on modern screen densities.

This just shows a few things you can do with text drawing.

Here is the updated code:

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {    DemoView demoview;    @Override    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);        demoview = new DemoView(this);        setContentView(demoview);    }    private class DemoView extends View {        public DemoView(Context context){            super(context);        }        @Override protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {            super.onDraw(canvas);            // custom drawing code here            // remember: y increases from top to bottom            // x increases from left to right            int x = 0;            int y = 0;            Paint paint = new Paint();            paint.setStyle(Paint.Style.FILL);            canvas.save();            canvas.translate(100, 200);            // make the entire canvas white            canvas.drawColor(Color.WHITE);            // draw some text using STROKE style            paint.setStyle(Paint.Style.STROKE);            paint.setStrokeWidth(1);            paint.setColor(Color.MAGENTA);            paint.setTextSize(100);            canvas.drawText("Style.STROKE", 0, 0, paint);            canvas.translate(0, 200);            // draw some text using FILL style            paint.setStyle(Paint.Style.FILL);            //turn antialiasing on            paint.setAntiAlias(true);            //paint.setTextSize(30);            canvas.drawText("Style.FILL", 0, 0, paint);            canvas.translate(0, 200);            // draw some rotated text            // get text width and height            // set desired drawing location            x = 75;            y = 185;            paint.setColor(Color.GRAY);            //paint.setTextSize(25);            String str2rotate = "Rotated!";            // draw bounding rect before rotating text            Rect rect = new Rect();            paint.getTextBounds(str2rotate, 0, str2rotate.length(), rect);            canvas.translate(x, y);            paint.setStyle(Paint.Style.FILL);            // draw unrotated text            canvas.drawText("!Rotated", 0, 0, paint);            paint.setStyle(Paint.Style.STROKE);            canvas.drawRect(rect, paint);            // undo the translate            canvas.translate(-x, -y);            // rotate the canvas on center of the text to draw            canvas.rotate(-45, x + rect.exactCenterX(),                    y + rect.exactCenterY());            // draw the rotated text            paint.setStyle(Paint.Style.FILL);            canvas.drawText(str2rotate, x, y, paint);            //undo the translation and rotation            canvas.restore();        }    }}

Something else that I want to try later is drawing text along a path.

See also this fuller answer here that gives the following image.

Another (arguably better) way to draw text on a canvas is to use a StaticLayout. This handles multiline text when needed.

String text = "This is some text.";TextPaint textPaint = new TextPaint();textPaint.setAntiAlias(true);textPaint.setTextSize(16 * getResources().getDisplayMetrics().density);textPaint.setColor(0xFF000000);int width = (int) textPaint.measureText(text);StaticLayout staticLayout = new StaticLayout(text, textPaint, (int) width, Layout.Alignment.ALIGN_NORMAL, 1.0f, 0, false);staticLayout.draw(canvas);

The TextPaint and StaticLayout were instantiated right before being used here for the sake of illustration. Doing so in onDraw would hurt performance, though. Here is a better example showing them in the context of a custom view that draws it's own text.