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...

Answer 2

After surveyed a couple of answers, I come out this, hope its help

for (UIView *subview in searchBar.subviews) {
    for (UIView *sv in subview.subviews) {
        if ([NSStringFromClass([sv class]) isEqualToString:@"UISearchBarTextField"]) {

            if ([sv respondsToSelector:@selector(setAttributedPlaceholder:)]) {
                ((UITextField *)sv).attributedPlaceholder = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:searchBar.placeholder attributes:@{NSForegroundColorAttributeName: [UIColor whiteColor]}];
            }
            break;
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

Found the answer from Change UITextField's placeholder text color programmatically

// Get the instance of the UITextField of the search bar
UITextField *searchField = [searchBar valueForKey:@"_searchField"];

// Change search bar text color
searchField.textColor = [UIColor redColor];

// Change the search bar placeholder text color
[searchField setValue:[UIColor blueColor] forKeyPath:@"_placeholderLabel.textColor"];

Answer 4

for iOS5+ use the appearance proxy

[[UILabel appearanceWhenContainedIn:[UISearchBar class], nil] setTextColor:[UIColor redColor]];

Answer 5

This solution works on Xcode 8.2.1. with Swift 3.0. :

extension UISearchBar
{
    func setPlaceholderTextColorTo(color: UIColor)
    {
        let textFieldInsideSearchBar = self.value(forKey: "searchField") as? UITextField
        textFieldInsideSearchBar?.textColor = color
        let textFieldInsideSearchBarLabel = textFieldInsideSearchBar!.value(forKey: "placeholderLabel") as? UILabel
        textFieldInsideSearchBarLabel?.textColor = color
    }
}

Usage example:

searchController.searchBar.setPlaceholderTextColorTo(color: mainColor)

Answer 6

This is an old question, but for anyone stumbling on it nowadays, you can change the search icon on iOS 8.x - 10.3 using the following:

[_searchBar setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"your-image-name"] forSearchBarIcon:UISearchBarIconSearch state:UIControlStateNormal];

Regarding the placeholder text color, you may check my other answer, which uses a Category, here: UISearchBar change placeholder color