Hide the cursor of an UITextField

Question

I am using a UITextField with a UIPickerView for its inputView, so that when the user taps the text field, a picker is summoned for th

Answer 1

set the tintColor to Clear Color

textfield.tintColor = [UIColor clearColor];

and you can also set from the interface builder

Answer 2

You can just clear the textfield's tintColor

self.textField.tintColor = [UIColor clearColor];

Swift 3.0

self.textField.tintColor = .clear

Answer 3

You can add a BOOL cursorless property to UITextField in a category via associated objects.

@interface UITextField (Cursorless)

@property (nonatomic, assign) BOOL cursorless;

@end

Then use method swizzling to swizzle caretRectForPosition: with a method that toggles between CGRectZero and its default value using cursorless.

This leads to a simple interface via a drop-in category. This is demonstrated in the following files.

Simply drop them in and get the benefit of this simple interface

UITextField category: https://github.com/rexmas/RexDK/blob/master/RexDK/UI/UITextField%2BRXCursorless.h https://github.com/rexmas/RexDK/blob/master/RexDK/UI/UITextField%2BRXCursorless.m

Method Swizzling: https://github.com/rexmas/RexDK/blob/master/RexDK/Foundation/NSObject%2BRXRuntimeAdditions.h https://github.com/rexmas/RexDK/blob/master/RexDK/Foundation/NSObject%2BRXRuntimeAdditions.m

Answer 4

You might also want to stop the user from selecting, copying or pasting any text so that the only text input comes from the picker view.

- (CGRect) caretRectForPosition:(UITextPosition*) position
{
    return CGRectZero;
}

- (NSArray *)selectionRectsForRange:(UITextRange *)range
{
    return nil;
}

- (BOOL)canPerformAction:(SEL)action withSender:(id)sender
{
    if (action == @selector(copy:) || action == @selector(selectAll:) || action == @selector(paste:))
    {
        returnNO;
    }

    return [super canPerformAction:action withSender:sender];
}

http://b2cloud.com.au/tutorial/disabling-the-caret-and-text-entry-in-uitextfields/

Answer 5

Swift 5 version of Net's post

  override func caretRect(for position: UITextPosition) -> CGRect {
    return .zero
  }
  
  override func selectionRects(for range: UITextRange) -> [UITextSelectionRect] {
    return []
  }
  
  override func canPerformAction(_ action: Selector, withSender sender: Any?) -> Bool {
    return false
  }

Answer 6

Answer provided by the OP, copied from the question body to help clean up the ever growing tail of unanswered questions.

I think I have the correct solution but If it can be improved will be welcome :) Well, I made a subclass of UITextField and overriden the method that returns the CGRect for the bounds

-(CGRect)textRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
    return CGRectZero;
}

The problem? The text doesn't show because the rect is zero. But I added an UILabel as a subview of the control and overridden the setText method so, as we enter a text as usual, the text field text is nil and is the label which shows the text

- (void)setText:(NSString *)aText {
    [super setText:nil];

    if (aText == nil) {
        textLabel_.text = nil;
    }

    if (![aText isEqualToString:@""]) {
        textLabel_.text = aText;
    }
}

With this the thing works as expected. Have you know any way to improve it?