Enable copy and paste on UITextField without making it editable

Question

I want the text in a UITextField (or ideally, a UILabel) to be non-editable, but at the same time give the user the ability to cop

Answer 1

This question is pretty old and I'm surprised nobody has posted a solution without subclassing. The idea presented in @mrueg's answer is correct, but you shouldn't need to subclass anything. I just came across this problem and solved it like this:

In my view controller:

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    self.textField.delegate = self;
    self.textField.text = @"Copyable, non-editable string.";
}

- (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder {
    return YES;
}

- (void)copyTextFieldContent:(id)sender {
    UIPasteboard* pb = [UIPasteboard generalPasteboard];
    pb.string = self.textField.text;
}

- (BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
    // UIKit changes the first responder after this method, so we need to show the copy menu after this method returns.
    dispatch_after(dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, (int64_t)(0.3*NSEC_PER_SEC)), dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
         [self becomeFirstResponder];
         UIMenuController* menuController = [UIMenuController sharedMenuController];
         UIMenuItem* copyItem = [[UIMenuItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Copy"
                                                           action:@selector(copyTextFieldContent:)];
         menuController.menuItems = @[copyItem];
         CGRect selectionRect = textField.frame;
         [menuController setTargetRect:selectionRect inView:self.view];
         [menuController setMenuVisible:YES animated:YES];
     });
     return NO;
}

If you want to make this work for a UILabel, it should work the same way with just adding a tap gesture recognizer instead of using the delegate method.