Hello everyone. How can I replicate the behavior of the Gmail app’s email input field for Arabic lo...

# compose

[Nick Kleban]

Hello everyone.

How can I replicate the behavior of the Gmail app’s email input field for Arabic locales using Compose’s TextField?
I’ve experimented with various combinations of TextDirection, but I can’t achieve the desired effect. The cursor doesn’t always appear where I expect it to be, and symbols like @ or ! are displayed on the left side of English text when they are the last characters.

Screen_recording_20250120_165607.webm

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

Might be a bug

[Nick Kleban]

To anyone who might be interested - I’ve managed to reproduce Gmail behaviour using TextStyle's textAlign in combination with textDirection

textDirection = TextDirection.ContentOrLtr, textAlign = TextAlign.Right

This is what I plan to use when LayoutDirection is RTL for all email, password, phone and similar input fields with predominately english text.

Arabic localisation is already confusing, there is definitely a room for improvement from the framework side

[Zach Klippenstein (he/him) [MOD]]

If you want the framework to improve, please file this as a bug

[Skaldebane]

I think this is expected behavior, not sure what else could Compose do here. Respecting the layout direction is the correct thing to do in most cases, and you opt-out when you don't want to.