So the space at the top of the TextView is padding used for characters outside the English language such as accents. To remove this space you can either set the android:includeFontPadding attribute to false in your XML or you can do it programmatically with the function setIncludeFontPadding(false).
Look at the SDK documentation for TextView if this is still unclear.
EDITED ANSWER
If setting the android:includeFontPadding attribute does not accomplish what you re trying to do, the other solution is to override the onDraw(Canvas canvas) method of the TextView that you re using so that it eliminates the additional top padding that Android adds to every TextView. After writing my original answer, I noticed that for some reason TextView includes extra padding in addition to the font padding. Removing the font padding as well as this additional padding perfectly aligns the text to the top of the TextView. Look at the code snippet below.
public class TopAlignedTextView extends TextView {
// Default constructor when inflating from XML file
public TopAlignedTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
this(context, attrs, 0);
}
// Default constructor override
public TopAlignedTextView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyle) {
super(context, attrs);
setIncludeFontPadding(false); //remove the font padding
setGravity(getGravity() | Gravity.TOP); //make sure that the gravity is set to the top
}
/*This is where the magic happens*/
@Override
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas){
TextPaint textPaint = getPaint();
textPaint.setColor(getCurrentTextColor());
textPaint.drawableState = getDrawableState();
canvas.save();
//converts 5dip into pixels
int additionalPadding = (int) TypedValue.applyDimension(TypedValue.COMPLEX_UNIT_DIP, 5, getContext().getResources().getDisplayMetrics());
//subtracts the additional padding from the top of the canvas that textview draws to in order to align it with the top.
canvas.translate(0, -additionalPadding);
if(getLayout() != null)
getLayout().draw(canvas);
canvas.restore();
}
}
