String resources

A string resource provides text strings for your application with optional text styling and formatting. There are three types of resources that can provide your application with strings:

String: XML resource that provides a single string.
String Array: XML resource that provides an array of strings.
Quantity Strings (Plurals): XML resource that carries different strings for pluralization.

All strings are capable of applying some styling markup and formatting arguments. For information about styling and formatting strings, see the section about Formatting and Styling.

String

A single string that can be referenced from the application code (such as a composable function) or from other resource files.

file location:

res/values/filename.xml
The filename is arbitrary. The <string> element's name is used as the resource ID.

compiled resource datatype:

Resource pointer to a String.

resource reference:

In Kotlin: R.string.string_name
In XML: @string/string_name

syntax:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string
        name="string_name"
        >text_string</string>
</resources>

elements:

example:

XML file saved at res/values/strings.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="hello">Hello!</string>
</resources>

This application code retrieves a string from inside a composable with stringResource():

@Composable
fun Greeting() {
    Text(text = stringResource(R.string.hello))
}

Note: To retrieve a string outside of a composable function, use context.getString(R.string.hello).

You can also reference string resources from other XML files, such as your AndroidManifest.xml:

<activity
    android:name=".MainActivity"
    android:label="@string/hello" />

String array

An array of strings that can be referenced from the application.

file location:

res/values/filename.xml
The filename is arbitrary. The <string-array> element's name is used as the resource ID.

compiled resource datatype:

Resource pointer to an array of Strings.

resource reference:

In Kotlin: R.array.string_array_name
In XML: @[package:]array/string_array_name

syntax:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string-array
        name="string_array_name">
        <item
            >text_string</item>
    </string-array>
</resources>

elements:

example:

XML file saved at res/values/strings.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string-array name="planets_array">
        <item>Mercury</item>
        <item>Venus</item>
        <item>Earth</item>
        <item>Mars</item>
    </string-array>
</resources>

This application code retrieves a string array from inside a composable with stringArrayResource():

@Composable
fun PlanetList() {
    val planets: Array =
        stringArrayResource(R.array.planets_array)
    // Render the array, e.g. inside a LazyColumn.
}

Note: To retrieve a string array outside of a composable function, use context.resources.getStringArray(R.array.planets_array).

Quantity strings (plurals)

Different languages have different rules for grammatical agreement with quantity. In English, for example, the quantity 1 is a special case. We write "1 book", but for any other quantity we'd write "n books". This distinction between singular and plural is very common, but other languages make finer distinctions. The full set supported by Android is zero, one, two, few, many, and other.

The rules for deciding which case to use for a given language and quantity can be very complex, so Android provides you with methods such as pluralStringResource() to select the appropriate resource for you.

Although historically called "quantity strings" (and still called that in API), quantity strings should only be used for plurals. It would be a mistake to use quantity strings to implement something like Gmail's "Inbox" versus "Inbox (12)" when there are unread messages, for example. It might seem convenient to use quantity strings instead of an if statement, but it's important to note that some languages (such as Chinese) don't make these grammatical distinctions at all, so you'll always get the other string.

The selection of which string to use is made solely based on grammatical necessity. In English, a string for zero is ignored even if the quantity is 0, because 0 isn't grammatically different from 2, or any other number except 1 ("zero books", "one book", "two books", and so on). Conversely, in Korean only the other string is ever used.

Don't be misled either by the fact that, say, two sounds like it could only apply to the quantity 2: a language may require that 2, 12, 102 (and so on) are all treated like one another but differently to other quantities. Rely on your translator to know what distinctions their language actually insists upon.

If your message doesn't contain the quantity number, it is probably not a good candidate for a plural. For example, in Lithuanian the singular form is used for both 1 and 101, so "1 book" is translated as "1 knyga", and "101 books" is translated as "101 knyga". Meanwhile "a book" is "knyga" and "many books" is "daug knygų". If an English plural message contains "a book" (singular) and "many books" (plural) without the actual number, it can be translated as "knyga" (a book)/"daug knygų" (many books), but with Lithuanian rules, it will show "knyga" (a single book), when the number happens to be 101.

It's often possible to avoid quantity strings by using quantity-neutral formulations such as "Books: 1". This makes your life and your translators' lives easier, if it's an acceptable style for your application.

On API 24+ you can use the much more powerful ICU MessageFormat class instead.

file location:

res/values/filename.xml
The filename is arbitrary. The <plurals> element's name is used as the resource ID.

resource reference:

In Kotlin: R.plurals.plural_name

syntax:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <plurals
        name="plural_name">
        <item
            quantity=["zero" | "one" | "two" | "few" | "many" | "other"]
            >text_string</item>
    </plurals>
</resources>

elements:

<resources>

Required. This must be the root node.

No attributes.

<plurals>

A collection of strings, of which, one string is provided depending on the amount of something. Contains one or more <item> elements.

attributes:

name: String. A name for the pair of strings. This name is used as the resource ID.

<item>

A plural or singular string. The value can be a reference to another string resource. Must be a child of a <plurals> element. Beware that you must escape apostrophes and quotation marks. See Formatting and Styling, below, for information about how to properly style and format your strings.

attributes:

quantity

Keyword. A value indicating when this string should be used. Valid values, with non-exhaustive examples in parentheses:

Value	Description
`zero`	When the language requires special treatment of the number 0 (as in Arabic).
`one`	When the language requires special treatment of numbers like one (as with the number 1 in English and most other languages; in Russian, any number ending in 1 but not ending in 11 is in this class).
`two`	When the language requires special treatment of numbers like two (as with 2 in Welsh, or 102 in Slovenian).
`few`	When the language requires special treatment of "small" numbers (as with 2, 3, and 4 in Czech; or numbers ending 2, 3, or 4 but not 12, 13, or 14 in Polish).
`many`	When the language requires special treatment of "large" numbers (as with numbers ending 11-99 in Maltese).
`other`	When the language does not require special treatment of the given quantity (as with all numbers in Chinese, or 42 in English).

example:

XML file saved at res/values/strings.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <plurals name="numberOfSongsAvailable">
        <!--
             As a developer, you should always supply "one" and "other"
             strings. Your translators will know which strings are actually
             needed for their language. Always include %d in "one" because
             translators will need to use %d for languages where "one"
             doesn't mean 1 (as explained above).
          -->
        <item quantity="one">%d song found.</item>
        <item quantity="other">%d songs found.</item>
    </plurals>
</resources>

XML file saved at res/values-pl/strings.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <plurals name="numberOfSongsAvailable">
        <item quantity="one">Znaleziono %d piosenkę.</item>
        <item quantity="few">Znaleziono %d piosenki.</item>
        <item quantity="other">Znaleziono %d piosenek.</item>
    </plurals>
</resources>

This application code retrieves a plural string from inside a composable with pluralStringResource():

@Composable
fun SongCount(count: Int) {
    Text(
        text = pluralStringResource(
            R.plurals.numberOfSongsAvailable,
            count,
            count,
        )
    )
}

When using the pluralStringResource() function, you need to pass the count twice if your string includes string formatting with a number. For example, for the string %d songs found, the first count parameter selects the appropriate plural string and the second count parameter is inserted into the %d placeholder. If your plural strings do not include string formatting, you don't need to pass the third parameter to pluralStringResource.

Note: To retrieve a plural string outside of a composable function, use context.resources.getQuantityString(R.plurals.numberOfSongsAvailable, count, count).

Format and style

Here are a few important things you should know about how to properly format and style your string resources.

Handle special characters

When a string contains characters that have special usage in XML, you must escape the characters according to the standard XML/HTML escaping rules. If you need to escape a character that has special meaning in Android you should use a preceding backslash.

By default Android will collapse sequences of whitespace characters into a single space. You can avoid this by enclosing the relevant part of your string in double quotes. In this case all whitespace characters (including new lines) will get preserved within the quoted region. Double quotes will allow you to use regular single unescaped quotes as well.

Character	Escaped form(s)
@	`\@`
?	`\?`
New line	`\n`
Tab	`\t`
U+XXXX Unicode character	`\uXXXX`
Single quote (`'`)	Any of the following: `\'` Enclose the entire string in double quotes (`"This'll work"`, for example)
Double quote (`"`)	`\"` Note that surrounding the string with single quotes does not work.

Whitespace collapsing and Android escaping happen after your resource file gets parsed as XML. This means that <string>    </string> (space, punctuation space, Unicode Em space) all collapse to a single space (" "), because they are all Unicode spaces after the file is parsed as an XML. To preserve those spaces as they are, you can either quote them (<string>"    "</string>) or use Android escaping (<string> \u0032 \u8200 \u8195</string>).

Formatting strings

If you need to format your strings, then you can do so by putting your format arguments in the string resource, as demonstrated by the following example resource.

<string name="welcome_messages">Hello, %1$s! You have %2$d new messages.</string>

This application code formats the string from inside a composable by passing arguments directly into stringResource():

@Composable
fun WelcomeMessage(username: String, mailCount: Int) {
    Text(
        text = stringResource(
            R.string.welcome_messages,
            username,
            mailCount,
        )
    )
}

Styling with HTML markup

You can add styling to your strings with HTML markup. For example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <string name="welcome">Welcome to <b>Android</b>!</string>
</resources>

The following HTML elements are supported:

Bold: 
Italic: , <cite>, <dfn>, 
25% larger text: <big>
20% smaller text: 
Setting font properties: . Examples of possible font families include monospace, serif, and sans_serif.
Setting a monospace font family: <tt>
Strikethrough: <s>, <strike>, <del>
Underline: 
Superscript: 
Subscript: 
Bullet points: <ul>, <li>
Line breaks:  
Division: <div>
CSS style: 
Paragraphs:

In some cases, you may want to create a styled text resource that is also used as a format string. Normally, this doesn't work because formatting methods, such as stringResource(), strip all the style information from the string. The work-around to this is to write the HTML tags with escaped entities, which are then recovered with AnnotatedString.fromHtml(), after the formatting takes place. For example:

Store your styled text resource as an HTML-escaped string:
```
<resources>
 <string name="welcome_messages">Hello, %1$s! You have &lt;b>%2$d new messages&lt;/b>.</string>
</resources>
```
In this formatted string, a  element is added. Notice that the opening bracket is HTML-escaped, using the < notation.
Then format the string as usual, but also call AnnotatedString.fromHtml() to convert the HTML text into a styled Compose string.

Because fromHtml() formats all HTML entities, be sure to escape any possible HTML characters in the strings you use with the formatted text, using TextUtils.htmlEncode().

import android.text.TextUtils
import androidx.compose.material3.Text
import androidx.compose.runtime.Composable
import androidx.compose.ui.res.stringResource
import androidx.compose.ui.text.AnnotatedString
import androidx.compose.ui.text.fromHtml

@Composable
fun WelcomeHtmlMessage(username: String, mailCount: Int) {
    // Escape the username in case it contains characters like "<" or "&"
    val escapedUsername = TextUtils.htmlEncode(username)

    val text = stringResource(
        R.string.welcome_messages,
        escapedUsername,
        mailCount,
    )

    Text(
        text = AnnotatedString.fromHtml(text)
    )
}

Styling with AnnotatedString

An AnnotatedString is a Compose text object that you can style with properties such as color and font weight. Build styled text programmatically using buildAnnotatedString and withStyle.

This application code creates a single text element with mixed styles:

@Composable
fun StyledGreeting() {
    val styled = buildAnnotatedString {
        append("Welcome to ")
        withStyle(SpanStyle(fontWeight = FontWeight.Bold)) {
            append("Android")
        }
        append("!")
    }
    Text(text = styled)
}

To apply color, font size, and text decoration, use SpanStyle. To apply paragraph-level styling (like alignment or line height), use ParagraphStyle:

@Composable
fun RichText() {
    val text = buildAnnotatedString {
        withStyle(ParagraphStyle(lineHeight = 24.sp, textAlign = TextAlign.Center)) {
            withStyle(SpanStyle(color = Color.Gray)) {
                append("Hello, ")
            }
            withStyle(
                SpanStyle(
                    fontWeight = FontWeight.Bold,
                    color = Color.Red,
                )
            ) {
                append("world")
            }
            append("!")
        }
    }
    Text(text = text)
}

Building the AnnotatedString directly is the recommended approach for single-language apps or static text in Compose. However, for styled text that requires localization, see the XML <annotation> approach detailed in the next section.

Styling translated strings with annotations

For strings that need custom styling and translation, define the <annotation> tag in each locale's strings.xml. Translators preserve the annotation regardless of where it lands in the sentence. Read the string with context.resources.getText(), walk its Annotation spans, and convert the result into an AnnotatedString:

@Composable
fun AnnotatedTitle() {
    val context = LocalContext.current
    val source = context.resources.getText(R.string.title) as SpannedString
    val text = buildAnnotatedString {
        append(source.toString())
        source.getSpans(0, source.length, Annotation::class.java)
            .forEach { annotation ->
                if (annotation.key == "font" &&
                    annotation.value == "title_emphasis") {
                    addStyle(
                        SpanStyle(
                            fontFamily = FontFamily(
                                Font(R.font.permanent_marker)
                            )
                        ),
                        source.getSpanStart(annotation),
                        source.getSpanEnd(annotation),
                    )
                }
            }
    }
    Text(text = text)
}

The <annotation> tag in your XML is unchanged. Only the retrieval code differs. Translators still move the tag to wrap the correct word in each language.

Additional resources

For more information about string resources, see the following additional resources:

Documentation

Views content

String resources (Views)

Style

String resources Stay organized with collections Save and categorize content based on your preferences.

String

String array

Quantity strings (plurals)

Format and style

Handle special characters

Formatting strings

Styling with HTML markup

Styling with AnnotatedString

Styling translated strings with annotations

Additional resources

Documentation

Views content

String resources