How can I add a placeholder in a UITextView
, similar to the one you can set for UITextField
, in Swift
?
Ios – Add placeholder text inside UITextView in Swift
iosplaceholderswiftuitextview
Related Solutions
There's no way to set the vertical-align on a UILabel
, but you can get the same effect by changing the label's frame. I've made my labels orange so you can see clearly what's happening.
Here's the quick and easy way to do this:
[myLabel sizeToFit];
If you have a label with longer text that will make more than one line, set numberOfLines
to 0
(zero here means an unlimited number of lines).
myLabel.numberOfLines = 0;
[myLabel sizeToFit];
Longer Version
I'll make my label in code so that you can see what's going on. You can set up most of this in Interface Builder too. My setup is a View-Based App with a background image I made in Photoshop to show margins (20 points). The label is an attractive orange color so you can see what's going on with the dimensions.
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
// 20 point top and left margin. Sized to leave 20 pt at right.
CGRect labelFrame = CGRectMake(20, 20, 280, 150);
UILabel *myLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:labelFrame];
[myLabel setBackgroundColor:[UIColor orangeColor]];
NSString *labelText = @"I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral";
[myLabel setText:labelText];
// Tell the label to use an unlimited number of lines
[myLabel setNumberOfLines:0];
[myLabel sizeToFit];
[self.view addSubview:myLabel];
}
Some limitations of using sizeToFit
come into play with center- or right-aligned text. Here's what happens:
// myLabel.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentRight;
myLabel.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;
[myLabel setNumberOfLines:0];
[myLabel sizeToFit];
The label is still sized with a fixed top-left corner. You can save the original label's width in a variable and set it after sizeToFit
, or give it a fixed width to counter these problems:
myLabel.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;
[myLabel setNumberOfLines:0];
[myLabel sizeToFit];
CGRect myFrame = myLabel.frame;
// Resize the frame's width to 280 (320 - margins)
// width could also be myOriginalLabelFrame.size.width
myFrame = CGRectMake(myFrame.origin.x, myFrame.origin.y, 280, myFrame.size.height);
myLabel.frame = myFrame;
Note that sizeToFit
will respect your initial label's minimum width. If you start with a label 100 wide and call sizeToFit
on it, it will give you back a (possibly very tall) label with 100 (or a little less) width. You might want to set your label to the minimum width you want before resizing.
Some other things to note:
Whether lineBreakMode
is respected depends on how it's set. NSLineBreakByTruncatingTail
(the default) is ignored after sizeToFit
, as are the other two truncation modes (head and middle). NSLineBreakByClipping
is also ignored. NSLineBreakByCharWrapping
works as usual. The frame width is still narrowed to fit to the rightmost letter.
Mark Amery gave a fix for NIBs and Storyboards using Auto Layout in the comments:
If your label is included in a nib or storyboard as a subview of the
view
of a ViewController that uses autolayout, then putting yoursizeToFit
call intoviewDidLoad
won't work, because autolayout sizes and positions the subviews afterviewDidLoad
is called and will immediately undo the effects of yoursizeToFit
call. However, callingsizeToFit
from withinviewDidLayoutSubviews
will work.
My Original Answer (for posterity/reference):
This uses the NSString
method sizeWithFont:constrainedToSize:lineBreakMode:
to calculate the frame height needed to fit a string, then sets the origin and width.
Resize the frame for the label using the text you want to insert. That way you can accommodate any number of lines.
CGSize maximumSize = CGSizeMake(300, 9999);
NSString *dateString = @"The date today is January 1st, 1999";
UIFont *dateFont = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica" size:14];
CGSize dateStringSize = [dateString sizeWithFont:dateFont
constrainedToSize:maximumSize
lineBreakMode:self.dateLabel.lineBreakMode];
CGRect dateFrame = CGRectMake(10, 10, 300, dateStringSize.height);
self.dateLabel.frame = dateFrame;
I made a few minor modifications to bcd's solution to allow for initialization from a Xib
file, text wrapping, and to maintain background color. Hopefully it will save others the trouble.
UIPlaceHolderTextView.h:
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
IB_DESIGNABLE
@interface UIPlaceHolderTextView : UITextView
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBInspectable NSString *placeholder;
@property (nonatomic, retain) IBInspectable UIColor *placeholderColor;
-(void)textChanged:(NSNotification*)notification;
@end
UIPlaceHolderTextView.m:
#import "UIPlaceHolderTextView.h"
@interface UIPlaceHolderTextView ()
@property (nonatomic, retain) UILabel *placeHolderLabel;
@end
@implementation UIPlaceHolderTextView
CGFloat const UI_PLACEHOLDER_TEXT_CHANGED_ANIMATION_DURATION = 0.25;
- (void)dealloc
{
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self];
#if __has_feature(objc_arc)
#else
[_placeHolderLabel release]; _placeHolderLabel = nil;
[_placeholderColor release]; _placeholderColor = nil;
[_placeholder release]; _placeholder = nil;
[super dealloc];
#endif
}
- (void)awakeFromNib
{
[super awakeFromNib];
// Use Interface Builder User Defined Runtime Attributes to set
// placeholder and placeholderColor in Interface Builder.
if (!self.placeholder) {
[self setPlaceholder:@""];
}
if (!self.placeholderColor) {
[self setPlaceholderColor:[UIColor lightGrayColor]];
}
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(textChanged:) name:UITextViewTextDidChangeNotification object:nil];
}
- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame
{
if( (self = [super initWithFrame:frame]) )
{
[self setPlaceholder:@""];
[self setPlaceholderColor:[UIColor lightGrayColor]];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(textChanged:) name:UITextViewTextDidChangeNotification object:nil];
}
return self;
}
- (void)textChanged:(NSNotification *)notification
{
if([[self placeholder] length] == 0)
{
return;
}
[UIView animateWithDuration:UI_PLACEHOLDER_TEXT_CHANGED_ANIMATION_DURATION animations:^{
if([[self text] length] == 0)
{
[[self viewWithTag:999] setAlpha:1];
}
else
{
[[self viewWithTag:999] setAlpha:0];
}
}];
}
- (void)setText:(NSString *)text {
[super setText:text];
[self textChanged:nil];
}
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
if( [[self placeholder] length] > 0 )
{
if (_placeHolderLabel == nil )
{
_placeHolderLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(8,8,self.bounds.size.width - 16,0)];
_placeHolderLabel.lineBreakMode = NSLineBreakByWordWrapping;
_placeHolderLabel.numberOfLines = 0;
_placeHolderLabel.font = self.font;
_placeHolderLabel.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
_placeHolderLabel.textColor = self.placeholderColor;
_placeHolderLabel.alpha = 0;
_placeHolderLabel.tag = 999;
[self addSubview:_placeHolderLabel];
}
_placeHolderLabel.text = self.placeholder;
[_placeHolderLabel sizeToFit];
[self sendSubviewToBack:_placeHolderLabel];
}
if( [[self text] length] == 0 && [[self placeholder] length] > 0 )
{
[[self viewWithTag:999] setAlpha:1];
}
[super drawRect:rect];
}
@end
Related Topic
- Ios – iPhone UITextField – Change placeholder text color
- Html – Change a HTML5 input’s placeholder color with CSS
- Html – How to make a placeholder for a ‘select’ box
- Android add placeholder text to EditText
- Swift – How to call Objective-C code from Swift
- Swift – #ifdef replacement in the Swift language
- Swift – #pragma mark in Swift
- Swift Beta performance: sorting arrays
Best Answer
Updated for Swift 4
UITextView
doesn't inherently have a placeholder property so you'd have to create and manipulate one programmatically usingUITextViewDelegate
methods. I recommend using either solution #1 or #2 below depending on the desired behavior.Note: For either solution, add
UITextViewDelegate
to the class and settextView.delegate = self
to use the text view’s delegate methods.Solution #1 - If you want the placeholder to disappear as soon as the user selects the text view:
First set the
UITextView
to contain the placeholder text and set it to a light gray color to mimic the look of aUITextField
's placeholder text. Either do so in theviewDidLoad
or upon the text view's creation.Then when the user begins to edit the text view, if the text view contains a placeholder (i.e. if its text color is light gray) clear the placeholder text and set the text color to black in order to accommodate the user's entry.
Then when the user finishes editing the text view and it's resigned as the first responder, if the text view is empty, reset its placeholder by re-adding the placeholder text and setting its color to light gray.
Solution #2 - If you want the placeholder to show whenever the text view is empty, even if the text view’s selected:
First set the placeholder in the
viewDidLoad
:(Note: Since the OP wanted to have the text view selected as soon as the view loads, I incorporated text view selection into the above code. If this is not your desired behavior and you do not want the text view selected upon view load, remove the last two lines from the above code chunk.)
Then utilize the
shouldChangeTextInRange
UITextViewDelegate
method, like so:And also implement
textViewDidChangeSelection
to prevent the user from changing the position of the cursor while the placeholder's visible. (Note:textViewDidChangeSelection
is called before the view loads so only check the text view's color if the window is visible):