Disabling user input for UITextfield in swift

Question

pretty trivial question, I know. But I can not find anything online.

I need to disable the user from being able to edit the text inside of a text field. So that when the click on the text, a keyboard doesn't show up.

Any ideas?

A programmatic solution or if it is possible through storyboards would be great.

Answer 1

I like to do it like old times. You just use a custom UITextField Class like this one:

//
//  ReadOnlyTextField.swift
//  MediFormulas
//
//  Created by Oscar Rodriguez on 6/21/17.
//  Copyright © 2017 Nica Code. All rights reserved.
//

import UIKit

class ReadOnlyTextField: UITextField {

    /*
    // Only override draw() if you perform custom drawing.
    // An empty implementation adversely affects performance during animation.
    override func draw(_ rect: CGRect) {
        // Drawing code
    }
    */

    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame: frame)

        // Avoid keyboard to show up
        self.inputView = UIView()
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)

        // Avoid keyboard to show up
        self.inputView = UIView()
    }

    override func canPerformAction(_ action: Selector, withSender sender: Any?) -> Bool {
        // Avoid cut and paste option show up
        if (action == #selector(self.cut(_:))) {
            return false
        } else if (action == #selector(self.paste(_:))) {
            return false
        }

        return super.canPerformAction(action, withSender: sender)
    }

}

Answer 2

If you want to do it while keeping the user interaction on. In my case I am using (or rather misusing) isFocused

self.myField.inputView = UIView()

This way it will focus but keyboard won't show up.

Answer 3

Swift 4.2 / Xcode 10.1:

Just uncheck behavior Enabled in your storyboard -> attributes inspector.

Answer 4

Try this:

Swift 2.0:

textField.userInteractionEnabled = false

Swift 3.0:

textField.isUserInteractionEnabled = false

Or in storyboard uncheck "User Interaction Enabled"

Answer 5

Another solution, declare your controller as UITextFieldDelegate, implement this call-back:

@IBOutlet weak var myTextField: UITextField!

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    myTextField.delegate = self
}

func textFieldShouldBeginEditing(textField: UITextField) -> Bool {
    if textField == myTextField {
        return false; //do not show keyboard nor cursor
    }
    return true
}

Answer 6

In storyboard you have two choise:

1. set the control's 'enable' to false.

2. set the view's 'user interaction enable' false

The diffierence between these choise is:

the appearance of UITextfild to display in the screen.

1. First is set the control's enable. You can see the backgroud color is changed.
2. Second is set the view's 'User interaction enable'. The backgroud color is NOT changed.

Within code:

1. textfield.enable = false

2. textfield.userInteractionEnabled = NO

   Updated for Swift 3

   1. textField.isEnabled = false
   2. textfield.isUserInteractionEnabled = false