UITextView - setting font not working with iOS 6 on XCode 5

Question

I'm using storyboards for my UI. I was previously using XCode 4.6 and released on iOS 6. I have since updated to iOS 7 using XCode 5 and updated the Storyboard to work nicely with XCode 5. I have one issue though:

UITextView doesn't want to display font changes within code. Text colour changes work fine. Any other property changes are fine. Font, not at all. I was using a custom font, so I checked different fonts with different sizes (i.e. systemFontOfSize:) but that didn't work. The text view only shows the font that's set in the Storyboard. What could I be missing here? Are there any auto-layout constraints that mess with this sort of thing? I had a few issues with constraints during the migration, but as I said, the fonts work fine in iOS 7.

I guess it's something in the Storyboard that I'm missing, as if I create a UIViewController and add a text view in code, it works fine.

I'd put up some code, but I'm not sure it'd help at all in this case.

Answer 1

Even stranger, this only happens on iPhone, not iPad.

If you're setting the font in code and don't want an editable text view, do this:

textView.editable = YES;
textView.font = newFont;
textView.editable = NO;

Answer 2

In my case, it is matter of 'selectable' property of UITextView.

So I checked 'selectable' property of UITextView in Storyboard Editor to set it YES

and later in viewWillAppear set this property to NO.

textview.text = @"some text";
textview.selectable = NO;

Answer 3

The issue was caused by the editable property being false in the Storyboard. I have absolutely no idea why this caused the font to remain unchanged - and only on iOS 6.

Answer 4

For me it's work if you set the text of your UITextView and after set the font (same for color) :

_myTextView.text = @"text";
[_myTextView setFont:[UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica Neue" size:18.0f]];
_myTextView.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor];

Answer 5

Thank you for all the answers guys. Issue is still present on iOS9. What i've found out, is that when you set "User Interaction Enabled = false" in the Interface Builder you can leave Editable and Selectable = true and user will not be able to edit a text view.

So, my solution is:

1. Set User Interaction Enabled = False in IB
2. Set Editable = True in IB
3. Set Selectable = True in IB
4. Configure your text view in whatever way you want.

Answer 6

Code for swift:

textOutlet.editable = true
textOutlet.textColor = UIColor.whiteColor()
textOutlet.font = UIFont(name: "ArialMT", size: 20)
textOutlet.editable = false

Or if you change the text first it magically gets solved

textOutlet.text = "omg lol wtf"
textOutlet.textColor = UIColor.whiteColor()
textOutlet.font = UIFont(name: "ArialMT", size: 20)

Answer 7

I found the font size was being ignored. This was resolved by ticking the checkbox called: Selectable (having selected the UITextView within the storyboard)

Answer 8

This issue only happens when setting Selectable property to FALSE in the Interface Builder.

In case you are required to have the Editable and Selectable properties set to FALSE do it from the CODE and not in the Interface Builder.

Summing up, make Editable and Selectable properties = YES in the Interface Builder and then add the following code in case you need the properties to be FALSE:

_textView.editable   = NO;
_textView.selectable = NO;

Hope this helps,

Answer 9

Swift 3 category that worked for me:

extension UITextView {
    func setFontAndUpdate(_ font: UIFont?) {
        self.font = font

        // Font doesn't update without text change
        let text = self.text
        self.text = nil
        self.text = text
    }
}

Answer 10

In my case(Developing on Xcode 7.3, iOS 9),

The cause was the order of setting text and font-family/size, not the options of editable or selectable many answers tell there.(and I don't get any storyboard, xib on that Textview.)

If I input like

[myTextView setFont:[UIFont fontWithName:@"HelveticaNeue-Italic" size:20]];
myTextView.attributedText = mAttStr;

then the font's family and size are not changed, but else when I reverse those two step, it works. Setting text should be ahead of setting font's family/size.

Answer 11

As mentioned by others:

textView.font = UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 16)
textView.isEditable = false

p.s. no need to first set isEditable as true since it's true by default: a little shorter, a little nicer