UITextView disabling text selection

Question

I\'m having a hard time getting the UITextView to disable the selecting of the text.

I\'ve tried:

canCancelContentTouches = YES;
         


        

Answer 1

You can disable text selection by subclassing UITextView.

The below solution is:

• compatible with isScrollEnabled
• compatible with loupe/magnifier
• but not compatible with links (see here for a solution compatible with links)

/// Class to disallow text selection
/// while keeping support for loupe/magnifier and scrolling
/// https://stackoverflow.com/a/49428248/1033581
class UnselectableTextView: UITextView {

    override init(frame: CGRect, textContainer: NSTextContainer?) {
        super.init(frame: frame, textContainer: textContainer)
        commonInit()
    }
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        commonInit()
    }
    private func commonInit() {
        // prevents selection from loupe/magnifier (_UITextSelectionForceGesture), multi tap, tap and a half, etc.
        // without losing the loupe/magnifier or scrolling
        // but we lose taps on links
        addSubview(transparentOverlayView)
    }
    let transparentOverlayView: UIView = {
        $0.backgroundColor = .clear
        $0.autoresizingMask = [.flexibleHeight, .flexibleWidth]
        return $0
    }(UIView())
    override var contentSize: CGSize {
        didSet {
            transparentOverlayView.frame = CGRect(origin: .zero, size: contentSize)
        }
    }

    // required to prevent blue background selection from any situation
    override var selectedTextRange: UITextRange? {
        get { return nil }
        set {}
    }
}