Show iPhone cut copy paste menu on UILabel

Question

1. Can we enable the cut copy paste menu for a UILabel as it is for a UITextField?

2. If not, and I need to convert my UIL

Answer 1

Swift 5.3 and SwiftUI

To make this work in SwiftUI we can use the method that pableiros created an combine that with a UIViewRepresentable.

There are two updates that we need to make to the CopyableLabel class as the following methods were deprecated in iOS 13.

.setTargetRect(_,in:)

.setMenutVisible(_,animated)

We can easily fix this by using the .showMenu(from:rect:) method instead.

Here is the updated CopyableLabel class.

class CopyableLabel: UILabel {

    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame: frame)
        self.sharedInit()
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        self.sharedInit()
    }

    func sharedInit() {
        self.isUserInteractionEnabled = true
        self.addGestureRecognizer(UILongPressGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(self.showMenu)))
    }

    @objc func showMenu(sender: AnyObject?) {
        self.becomeFirstResponder()

        let menu = UIMenuController.shared

        if !menu.isMenuVisible {
            menu.showMenu(from: self, rect: self.bounds) // <-  we update the deprecated methods here
        }
    }

    override func copy(_ sender: Any?) {
        let board = UIPasteboard.general

        board.string = text

        let menu = UIMenuController.shared

        menu.showMenu(from: self, rect: self.bounds) // <- we update the deprecated methods here
    }

    override var canBecomeFirstResponder: Bool {
        return true
    }

    override func canPerformAction(_ action: Selector, withSender sender: Any?) -> Bool {
        return action == #selector(UIResponderStandardEditActions.copy)
    }
}

Then to get this class to work with SwiftUI all we have to do is create a simple UIViewRepresentable.

struct CopyableLabelView: UIViewRepresentable {

    let text: String
    private let label = CopyableLabel(frame: .zero)

    init(text: String) {
        self.text = text
    }

    func makeUIView(context: Context) -> UILabel {
        // Set the text for the label
        label.text = text

        // Set the content hugging priority so the UILabel's view is
        // kept tight to the text.
        label.setContentHuggingPriority(.required, for: .horizontal)
        label.setContentHuggingPriority(.required, for: .vertical)
        return label
    }

    func updateUIView(_ uiView: UILabel, context: Context) {
        // Handle when the text that is passed changes
        uiView.text = text
    }
}