UISearchBar change placeholder color

Question

Has anyone any idea or code sample on how can I change the text color of the placeholder text of a UISearchBar?

Answer 1

iOS 13

Use a custom search bar.

This also works when part of a UISearchController inside a UINavigationItem (with hidesSearchBarWhenScrolling = true).

We want to apply our changes immediately after UIAppearance proxies are being applied since those are the most likely root cause:

class MySearchBar : UISearchBar {
    // Appearance proxies are applied when a view is added to a view hierarchy, so apply your tweaks after that:
    override func didMoveToSuperview() {
        super.didMoveToSuperview() // important! - system colors will not apply correctly on ios 11-12 without this

        let placeholderColor = UIColor.white.withAlphaComponent(0.75)
        let placeholderAttributes = [NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor : placeholderColor]
        let attributedPlaceholder = NSAttributedString(string: "My custom placeholder", attributes: placeholderAttributes)
        self.searchTextField.attributedPlaceholder = attributedPlaceholder
        
        // Make the magnifying glass the same color
        (self.searchTextField.leftView as? UIImageView)?.tintColor = placeholderColor
    }
}

// Override `searchBar` as per the documentation
private class MySearchController : UISearchController {
    private lazy var customSearchBar = MySearchBar()
    override var searchBar: UISearchBar { customSearchBar }
}

That took quite some time to get working properly...