🐛 Android: Cursor jumps to right when clearing centered TextInput

[DevarajuluR]

Description

When using a TextInput with textAlign: "center" on Android, clearing the input causes the cursor to move to the right end of the input instead of staying centered.

This does not happen on iOS — iOS behaves correctly.

This issue makes centered numeric or OTP-style inputs feel broken on Android.

Steps to reproduce

1)Render a TextInput with textAlign: "center"
2)Type any value
3)Clear the value (backspace or programmatically)
4)Observe cursor position

`import React, { useState } from "react";
import { View, TextInput, StyleSheet } from "react-native";

export default function App() {
const [value, setValue] = useState("");

return (



);
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
container: {
flex: 1,
justifyContent: "center",
padding: 20,
},
input: {
borderWidth: 1,
height: 48,
fontSize: 18,
textAlign: "center",
},
});
`

React Native Version

0.83.0

Affected Platforms

Runtime - Android

Output of npx @react-native-community/cli info

N/A

Stacktrace or Logs

N/A

MANDATORY Reproducer

https://reactnative.dev/docs/textinput

Screenshots and Videos

TextAlign.issue.webm

[react-native-bot]

Warning

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[DevarajuluR]

here is the reproducible snack
Textinput issue

[ishaquehassan]

The bug is in maybeSetText() in ReactEditText.kt. When the incoming text has length 0, the code does: if (reactTextUpdate.text.length == 0) { text = null } This call to setText(null) resets the EditText state completely. The comment in the code explains why: on some devices, buggy keyboards don't clear their composing text when the content is programmatically cleared, so setting null forces the composing text to be dismissed. The side effect is that after setText(null), Android places the cursor at its default position, which for a centered EditText does not end up visually centered. Adding an explicit setSelection(0) after the text = null line should put the cursor back at the known empty position, which Android then renders in the center because the gravity is still CENTER_HORIZONTAL. The relevant section in ReactEditText.kt (around line 686) would become:

if (reactTextUpdate.text.length == 0) {
    text = null
    setSelection(0)
}

This is safe because selectionStart and selectionEnd are both 0 on an empty string anyway. The existing maybeSetSelection() method could also be used here if the broader selection-state machinery needs to be informed.

[HarshitMadhav]

Hi @ishaquehassan @DevarajuluR I have raised a fix for this PR here
#56615