EditText: Disable Paste/Replace menu pop-up on Text Selection Handler click event

Solution: Override isSuggestionsEnabled and canPaste in EditText.

For the quick solution, copy the class below – this class overrides the EditText class, and blocks all events accordingly.

For the gritty details, keep reading.

The solution lies in preventing PASTE/REPLACE menu from appearing in the show() method of the (non-documented) android.widget.Editor class. Before the menu appears, a check is done to if (!canPaste && !canSuggest) return;. The two methods that are used as the basis to set these variables are both in the EditText class:

• isSuggestionsEnabled() is public, and may thus be overridden.
• canPaste() is not, and thus must be hidden by introducing a function of the same name in the derived class.

So incorporating these updates into a class that also has the setCustomSelectionActionModeCallback, and the disabled long-click, here is the full class to prevent all editing (but still display the text selection handler) for controlling the cursor:

package com.cjbs.widgets;

import android.content.Context;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import android.view.ActionMode;
import android.view.Menu;
import android.view.MenuItem;
import android.widget.EditText;


/**
 *  This is a thin veneer over EditText, with copy/paste/spell-check removed.
 */
public class NoMenuEditText extends EditText
{
    private final Context context;

    /** This is a replacement method for the base TextView class' method of the same name. This 
     * method is used in hidden class android.widget.Editor to determine whether the PASTE/REPLACE popup
     * appears when triggered from the text insertion handle. Returning false forces this window
     * to never appear.
     * @return false
     */
    boolean canPaste()
    {
       return false;
    }

    /** This is a replacement method for the base TextView class' method of the same name. This method
     * is used in hidden class android.widget.Editor to determine whether the PASTE/REPLACE popup
     * appears when triggered from the text insertion handle. Returning false forces this window
     * to never appear.
     * @return false
     */
    @Override
    public boolean isSuggestionsEnabled()
    {
        return false;
    }

    public NoMenuEditText(Context context)
    {
        super(context);
        this.context = context;
        init();
    }

    public NoMenuEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs)
    {
        super(context, attrs);
        this.context = context;
        init();
    }

    public NoMenuEditText(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle)
    {
        super(context, attrs, defStyle);
        this.context = context;
        init();
    }

    private void init()
    {
        this.setCustomSelectionActionModeCallback(new ActionModeCallbackInterceptor());
        this.setLongClickable(false);
    }


    /**
     * Prevents the action bar (top horizontal bar with cut, copy, paste, etc.) from appearing
     * by intercepting the callback that would cause it to be created, and returning false.
     */
    private class ActionModeCallbackInterceptor implements ActionMode.Callback
    {
        private final String TAG = NoMenuEditText.class.getSimpleName();

        public boolean onCreateActionMode(ActionMode mode, Menu menu) { return false; }
        public boolean onPrepareActionMode(ActionMode mode, Menu menu) { return false; }
        public boolean onActionItemClicked(ActionMode mode, MenuItem item) { return false; }
        public void onDestroyActionMode(ActionMode mode) {}
    }
} 

I’ve tested this in Android v4.4.2 and v4.4.3.