Multiline TextView in Android?

If the text you're putting in the TextView is short, it will not automatically expand to four lines. If you want the TextView to always have four lines regardless of the length of the text in it, set the android:lines attribute:

<TextView    android:id="@+id/address1"    android:gravity="left"    android:layout_height="fill_parent"    android:layout_width="wrap_content"    android:maxLines="4"    android:lines="4"    android:text="Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat."></TextView>

You can do this with TableRow, see below code

<TableRow >        <TextView            android:id="@+id/tv_description_heading"            android:layout_width="wrap_content"            android:layout_height="wrap_content"            android:gravity="left"            android:padding="8dp"            android:text="@string/rating_review"            android:textColor="@color/black"            android:textStyle="bold" />        <TextView            android:id="@+id/tv_description"            android:layout_width="wrap_content"            android:layout_height="wrap_content"            android:gravity="left"            android:maxLines="4"`enter code here`            android:padding="8dp"            android:text="The food test was very good."            android:textColor="@color/black"            android:textColorHint="@color/hint_text_color" />    </TableRow>

I just thought I'd add that if you use :

android:inputType="textMultiLine"

Then the view stops being clickable. I was trying to get multi line textviews in my slide-drawer menu which obviously needs to respond to clicks.

The android:singleLine="false" worked fine though.

I like neither of the answers. Simply set the inputType and the TextView will adapt to its content

<TextView            android:layout_width="wrap_content"            android:layout_height="wrap_content"            android:inputType="textMultiLine"/>

Tested on a Nexus One (2.3) and Nexus 4 (4.4)