We’re all accustomed to AI chats at this point; some might have noticed that on the web, most have a neat gradual fade in effect for their text content. Yet on Android, it is not nearly as widespread. A few chat apps do it, but many don’t. Why is that? What does it take to get the same effect in Compose, and why does the title of this session say it’s a rabbit hole? Oh boy, get ready for quite an adventure! With the excuse of figuring out how to implement this effect in a performant manner, we’ll learn a ton about how the Compose text stack works, what are the wrong ways to implement this effect, and how you’d go around with a lot of custom stuff you probably didn’t even know existed. This talk is aimed mainly at people who know at least what BasicText and shaping are, and ones who are curious to see a bunch of exotic scripts and an Italian guy excitedly explaining why bidi runs selection is cursed, performance tips, and why sometimes it’s worth to keep trying even if you fail at nine out of ten attempts.