Custom Position of Hint in Edit Text box.

You can set the position of the text using the "gravity" attribute (as noted at http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html#setGravity(int)). So to put the text at the bottom you would have;

android:gravity="bottom"

And to answer your bonus question; No, you can't display the hint when text is entered into the edit text view. Displaying the hint only when the box is empty is the defined behaviour as noted at http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html#setHint(int)

(and yes, I know the links are for TextView, but EditText derives all of its' text positioning and hint handling functionality from TextView).


Actually THERE IS a way to prevent hint from hiding, and it's a cool one :-)

It gives you the Floating Label look with smooth animation very easily and it's from android itself. No extra libraries and stuff.

Try this:

<android.support.design.widget.TextInputLayout
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content">
        <EditText
                android:layout_width="match_parent"
                android:layout_height="wrap_content"
                android:hint="Touch me and I'll fly!"/>
</android.support.design.widget.TextInputLayout>

You can change the behaviour using other xml tags like android:gravity="start|center|end" and others.

As a BONUS, you can use error messages with it :-) Here's the link to that question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/30953551/6474744

And sorry I do not have enough reputatuion to post images, so help yourself:

http://i0.wp.com/androidlift.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Screenshot_2015-09-28-17-03-561.png

Enjoy :-)