How can I get the selected text frame from a UITextView

Question

I\'m trying to display an UIPopoverController from the rect of a selected text in an UITextView, How can I get the selected text CGRect

Answer 1

There are some situations where barley's answer won't actually give the center of the selection. For example:

In this case you can see the Copy/Paste menu is displaying in the center of the selection, which spans the entire width of the text field. But calculating the center of the two caret rects would give a position much further to the right.

You can get a more precise result using selectionRectsForRange:

UITextRange *selectionRange = [textView selectedTextRange];
NSArray *selectionRects = [self.textView selectionRectsForRange:selectionRange];
CGRect completeRect = CGRectNull;
for (UITextSelectionRect *selectionRect in selectionRects) {
    if (CGRectIsNull(completeRect)) {
        completeRect = selectionRect.rect;
    } else completeRect = CGRectUnion(completeRect,selectionRect.rect);
}

It's also worth clarifying that if you're still supporting iOS 4 and using either of these answers, you'll need to make sure these methods are supported before calling them: if ([textView respondsToSelector:@selector(selectedTextRange)]) { …