The actual solution to the problem is this:
for any EditText that you want to use the selectAll () method on, you must declare it BufferType as TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE. this allows you to fetch for a spannable object. see the Spannable, EditText, and Selection classes for more information. here is a software example:
myEditText.setText("mytext", TextView.BufferType.SPANNABLE);
myEditText.selectAll();
bufferType xml, android: bufferType.