Drop Shadow on UITextField text

Question

Is it possible to add a shadow to the text in a UITextField?

Answer 1

Although the method of applying the shadow directly to the UITextView will work, it's the wrong way to do this. By adding the shadow directly with a clear background color, all subviews will get the shadow, even the cursor.

The approach that should be used is with NSAttributedString.

NSMutableAttributedString* attString = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:textView.text];
NSRange range = NSMakeRange(0, [attString length]);

[attString addAttribute:NSFontAttributeName value:textView.font range:range];
[attString addAttribute:NSForegroundColorAttributeName value:textView.textColor range:range];

NSShadow* shadow = [[NSShadow alloc] init];
shadow.shadowColor = [UIColor whiteColor];
shadow.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(0.0f, 1.0f);
[attString addAttribute:NSShadowAttributeName value:shadow range:range];

textView.attributedText = attString;

However textView.attributedText is for iOS6. If you must support lower versions, you could use the following approach. (Dont forget to add #import )

CALayer *textLayer = (CALayer *)[textView.layer.sublayers objectAtIndex:0];
textLayer.shadowColor = [UIColor whiteColor].CGColor;
textLayer.shadowOffset = CGSizeMake(0.0f, 1.0f);
textLayer.shadowOpacity = 1.0f;
textLayer.shadowRadius = 0.0f;