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

Categories FTW. Could be optimized to check for effective color change.

---

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface UITextField (OPConvenience)

@property (strong, nonatomic) UIColor* placeholderColor;

@end

#import "UITextField+OPConvenience.h"

@implementation UITextField (OPConvenience)

- (void) setPlaceholderColor: (UIColor*) color {
    if (color) {
        NSMutableAttributedString* attrString = [self.attributedPlaceholder mutableCopy];
        [attrString setAttributes: @{NSForegroundColorAttributeName: color} range: NSMakeRange(0,  attrString.length)];
        self.attributedPlaceholder =  attrString;
    }
}

- (UIColor*) placeholderColor {
    return [self.attributedPlaceholder attribute: NSForegroundColorAttributeName atIndex: 0 effectiveRange: NULL];
}

@end

Answer 2

You can override drawPlaceholderInRect:(CGRect)rect as such to manually render the placeholder text:

- (void) drawPlaceholderInRect:(CGRect)rect {
    [[UIColor blueColor] setFill];
    [[self placeholder] drawInRect:rect withFont:[UIFont systemFontOfSize:16]];
}

Answer 3

iOS 6 and later offers attributedPlaceholder on UITextField. iOS 3.2 and later offers setAttributes:range: on NSMutableAttributedString.

You can do the following:

NSMutableAttributedString *ms = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:self.yourInput.placeholder];
UIFont *placeholderFont = self.yourInput.font;
NSRange fullRange = NSMakeRange(0, ms.length);
NSDictionary *newProps = @{NSForegroundColorAttributeName:[UIColor yourColor], NSFontAttributeName:placeholderFont};
[ms setAttributes:newProps range:fullRange];
self.yourInput.attributedPlaceholder = ms;

Answer 4

Maybe you want to try this way, but Apple might warn you about accessing private ivar:

[self.myTextField setValue:[UIColor darkGrayColor] 
                forKeyPath:@"_placeholderLabel.textColor"];

NOTE
This is not working on iOS 7 anymore, according to Martin Alléus.

Answer 5

Easy and pain-free, could be an easy alternative for some.

_placeholderLabel.textColor

Not suggested for production, Apple may reject your submission.

Answer 6

You can Change the Placeholder textcolor to any color which you want by using the below code.

UIColor *color = [UIColor lightTextColor];
YOURTEXTFIELD.attributedPlaceholder = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"PlaceHolder Text" attributes:@{NSForegroundColorAttributeName: color}];