iPhone UITextField - Change placeholder text color

Question

I'd like to change the color of the placeholder text I set in my UITextField controls, to make it black.

I'd prefer to do this without using normal text as the placeholder and having to override all the methods to imitate the behaviour of a placeholder.

I believe if I override this method:

- (void)drawPlaceholderInRect:(CGRect)rect

then I should be able to do this. But I'm unsure how to access the actual placeholder object from within this method.

Answer 1

For set Attributed Textfield Placeholder with Multiple color ,

Just specify the Text ,

  //txtServiceText is your Textfield
 _txtServiceText.placeholder=@"Badal/ Shah";
    NSMutableAttributedString *mutable = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:_txtServiceText.placeholder];
     [mutable addAttribute: NSForegroundColorAttributeName value:[UIColor whiteColor] range:[_txtServiceText.placeholder rangeOfString:@"Badal/"]]; //Replace it with your first color Text
    [mutable addAttribute: NSForegroundColorAttributeName value:[UIColor orangeColor] range:[_txtServiceText.placeholder rangeOfString:@"Shah"]]; // Replace it with your secondcolor string.
    _txtServiceText.attributedPlaceholder=mutable;

Output :-

Answer 2

Iam new to xcode and i found a way around to the same effect.

I placed a uilabel in place of place holder with the desired format and hide it in

- (void)textFieldDidBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField
{
    switch (textField.tag)
    {
        case 0:
            lblUserName.hidden=YES;
            break;

        case 1:
            lblPassword.hidden=YES;
            break;

        default:
            break;
    }
}

I agree its a work around and not a real solution but the effect was same got it from this link

NOTE: Still works on iOS 7 :|

Answer 3

The best i can do for both iOS7 and less is:

- (CGRect)placeholderRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
  return [self textRectForBounds:bounds];
}

- (CGRect)editingRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
  return [self textRectForBounds:bounds];
}

- (CGRect)textRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
  CGRect rect = CGRectInset(bounds, 0, 6); //TODO: can be improved by comparing font size versus bounds.size.height
  return rect;
}

- (void)drawPlaceholderInRect:(CGRect)rect {
  UIColor *color =RGBColor(65, 65, 65);
  if (SYSTEM_VERSION_GREATER_THAN_OR_EQUAL_TO(@"7.0")) {
    [self.placeholder drawInRect:rect withAttributes:@{NSFontAttributeName:self.font, UITextAttributeTextColor:color}];
  } else {
    [color setFill];
    [self.placeholder drawInRect:rect withFont:self.font];
  }
}

Answer 4

Also in your storyboard, without single line of code

Answer 5

For Xamarin.iOS developers, I found it from this document https://developer.xamarin.com/api/type/Foundation.NSAttributedString/

textField.AttributedPlaceholder = new NSAttributedString ("Hello, world",new UIStringAttributes () { ForegroundColor =  UIColor.Red });

Answer 6

I needed to keep the placeholder alignment so adam's answer was not enough for me.

To solve this I used a small variation that I hope will help some of you too:

- (void) drawPlaceholderInRect:(CGRect)rect {
    //search field placeholder color
    UIColor* color = [UIColor whiteColor];

    [color setFill];
    [self.placeholder drawInRect:rect withFont:self.font lineBreakMode:UILineBreakModeTailTruncation alignment:self.textAlignment];
}