Are you calling it in `onCreate`? if yes then it will return null because it is not being rendered yet. you need to use something like below

ViewTreeObserver vto = mytextview.getViewTreeObserver();
    vto.addOnGlobalLayoutListener(new OnGlobalLayoutListener() {
        @Override
        public void onGlobalLayout() {
           Layout layout = mytextview.getLayout();  
        }
    });