 <p>You probably want to use a <a href="https://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/SpannableString.html" rel="nofollow">SpannableString</a> for this, which allows individual parts of a string to be rendered differently in a TextView.</p> <p>Like so:</p> <pre><code> SpannableString str = new SpannableString("Highlighted. Not highlighted."); str.setSpan(new BackgroundColorSpan(Color.YELLOW), 0, 11, 0); textView.setText(str); </code></pre>