Prevent CAB from showing on EditText text selection

Question

I'm trying to prevent the standard Contextual Action Bar from showing upon selecting text in an EditText, while keeping the text selection functionality. (Cause I want to use custom views to copy, cut and paste)

I've browsed the web, and tried the following things, with no luck, and don't know what to do now.

• I tried overriding onLongClick() and returning false, which prevents the CAB from showing. but is also disables the text selection, so this is not a solution.

• I tried setting setCustomSelectionActionModeCallback(null), which has no effect at all.

• I tried setting setCustomSelectionActionModeCallback() with a custom ActionModeCallback, which contains the method onCreateActionMode(), in which I return false to "abort the mode", but this unfortunately also disables the text selection functionality.

• I even tried extending EditText and overriding startActionMode() and pass null to the super, like below, but which just made it crash.

.

@Override
public ActionMode startActionMode(ActionMode.Callback callback) {
    return super.startActionMode(null);
}

With the following error

 java.lang.NullPointerException
            at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView$ActionModeCallbackWrapper.onCreateActionMode(PhoneWindow.java:3011)
            at com.android.internal.app.ActionBarImpl$ActionModeImpl.dispatchOnCreate(ActionBarImpl.java:909)
            at com.android.internal.app.ActionBarImpl.startActionMode(ActionBarImpl.java:453)
            at android.app.Activity.onWindowStartingActionMode(Activity.java:5005)
            at android.support.v7.app.ActionBarActivityDelegateICS$WindowCallbackWrapper.onWindowStartingActionMode(ActionBarActivityDelegateICS.java:349)
            at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.startActionMode(PhoneWindow.java:2636)
            at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.startActionModeForChild(PhoneWindow.java:2623)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.ViewGroup.startActionModeForChild(ViewGroup.java:665)
            at android.view.View.startActionMode(View.java:4543)
            at com.harteg.homenotes.EditTextFormat.startActionMode(EditTextFormat.java:480)
            at android.widget.Editor.startSelectionActionMode(Editor.java:1551)
            at android.widget.Editor.performLongClick(Editor.java:859)
            at android.widget.TextView.performLongClick(TextView.java:8362)
            at android.view.View$CheckForLongPress.run(View.java:18425)
            at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:733)
            at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:95)
            at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:136)
            at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5081)
            at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
            at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:515)
            at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:791)
            at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:607)
            at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)