NSTextField - White text on black background, but black cursor

Question

I\'ve setup an NSTextField with text color as white, and the background color as (black despite not rendering the background color, so its transparent). All in

Answer 1

Since in practice the NSText* returned by -currentEditor for an NSTextField is always an NSTextView*, I added the following code to my custom NSTextField subclass:

-(BOOL) becomeFirstResponder
{
    BOOL    success = [super becomeFirstResponder];
    if( success )
    {
        // Strictly spoken, NSText (which currentEditor returns) doesn't
        // implement setInsertionPointColor:, but it's an NSTextView in practice.
        // But let's be paranoid, better show an invisible black-on-black cursor
        // than crash.
        NSTextView* textField = (NSTextView*) [self currentEditor];
        if( [textField respondsToSelector: @selector(setInsertionPointColor:)] )
            [textField setInsertionPointColor: [NSColor whiteColor]];
    }
    return success;
}

So if you're already replacing this class because you're doing custom background drawing, this might be a more encapsulated solution. Maybe there's even a way to move this up into NSCell, which would be cleaner since NSCell is the one doing the drawing and knowing the colors anyway.

Answer 2

easiest way is

 override func viewDidAppear() {
    if let fieldEditor = self.view.window?.fieldEditor(true, for: self) as? NSTextView{
        fieldEditor.insertionPointColor = NSColor.black
    }
 }

Answer 3

TextField Insertion Point Color

NSTextField *textField = self.textField;
NSColor *insertionPointColor = [NSColor blueColor];

NSTextView *fieldEditor = (NSTextView*)[textField.window fieldEditor:YES
                                                           forObject:textField];
fieldEditor.insertionPointColor = insertionPointColor;

Answer 4

Your best bet is probably to use NSTextView and - (void)setInsertionPointColor:(NSColor *)color.

Answer 5

Inspired by the great answer of Jon Steinmetz I created the following example.

I added a NSSecureTextField to the application view and connected it to the IBOutlet of the member variable I placed into AppDelegate.

@implementation AppDelegate

@synthesize password = m_password;

- (void)awakeFromNib {
    assert(m_password);
    self.password.backgroundColor = [NSColor blackColor];
}

Then I created a custom NSSecureTextField class. I noticed that is in some cases not enough to set the colors in awakeFromNib but I cannot give a reason for this.

@implementation CustomSecureTextField

- (void)customize {
    // Customize the text and caret color.
    NSColor* foregroundColor = [NSColor whiteColor];
    self.textColor = foregroundColor;
    [[self.cell fieldEditorForView:self] setInsertionPointColor:foregroundColor];   
}

- (void)awakeFromNib {
    [self customize];
}

- (void)textDidBeginEditing:(NSNotification*)notification {
    // Called when the user inputs a character.
    [self customize];
}

- (void)textDidEndEditing:(NSNotification*)notification {
    // Called when the user clicks into the field for the first time.
    [self customize];   
}

- (void)textDidChange:(NSNotification*)notification {
    // Just in case ... for the paranoid programmer!
    [self customize];
}


@end

Note: Though, I do not understand why the background color cannot be set when I do this in the derived class like with the textColor. That would allow to get rid of the IBOutlet and the member variable.

Answer 6

Swift 4 Solution

override func viewDidAppear() {
    super.viewDidAppear()
    guard let window = _textField.window, let fieldEditor = window.fieldEditor(true, for: _textField) as? NSTextView else { return }
    fieldEditor.insertionPointColor = .white
}