iOS - Dismiss keyboard when touching outside of UI

Question

I'm wondering how to make the keyboard disappear when the user touches outside of a UITextField.

Answer 1

I think the easiest (and best) way to do this is to subclass your global view and use hitTest:withEvent method to listen to any touch. Touches on keyboard aren't registered, so hitTest:withEvent is only called when you touch/scroll/swipe/pinch... somewhere else, then call [self endEditing:YES].

This is better than using touchesBegan because touchesBegan are not called if you click on a button on top of the view. It is better than UITapGestureRecognizer which can't recognize a scrolling gesture for example. It is also better than using a dim screen because in a complexe and dynamic user interface, you can't put dim screen everywhere. Moreover, it doesn't block other actions, you don't need to tap twice to select a button outside (like in the case of a UIPopover).

Also, it's better than calling [textField resignFirstResponder], because you may have many text fields on screen, so this works for all of them.

Answer 2

Swift 4 oneliner

view.addGestureRecognizer(UITapGestureRecognizer(target: view, action: #selector(UIView.endEditing(_:))))

Answer 3

In this case, there can be use ScrollView and added to TextField in ScrollView and I want Tap the ScrollView and View then Dismiss the Keyboard. I tried to create sample code just in case. Like this,

import UIKit

class ViewController: UIViewController {

    @IBOutlet weak var scrollView: UIScrollView!
    @IBOutlet weak var textField: UITextField!

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        let tapGesture = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(ViewController.tap(_:)))
        view.addGestureRecognizer(tapGesture)
        // Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
    }
    func tap(gesture: UITapGestureRecognizer) {
        textField.resignFirstResponder()
    }
    override func didReceiveMemoryWarning() {
        super.didReceiveMemoryWarning()
        // Dispose of any resources that can be recreated.
    }
}

Your Storyboard Look at that Just Like.

Answer 4

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad]; 

UITapGestureRecognizer *singleTapGestureRecognizer = [[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc]
                                                          initWithTarget:self
                                                          action:@selector(handleSingleTap:)];
    [singleTapGestureRecognizer setNumberOfTapsRequired:1];
    [singleTapGestureRecognizer requireGestureRecognizerToFail:singleTapGestureRecognizer];

    [self.view addGestureRecognizer:singleTapGestureRecognizer];
}

- (void)handleSingleTap:(UITapGestureRecognizer *)recognizer
{
    [self.view endEditing:YES];
    [textField resignFirstResponder];
    [scrollView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, -40) animated:YES];

}

Answer 5

I tried many of the responses here and had no luck. My tap gesture recognizer was always causing my UIButtons to not respond when tapped, even when I set the cancelsTouchesInView property of the gesture recognizer to NO.

This is what eventually solved the issue:

Have an ivar:

UITapGestureRecognizer *_keyboardDismissGestureRecognizer;

When a text field begins editing, set the gesture recognizer:

- (void) textFieldDidBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField
{
    if(_keyboardDismissGestureRecognizer == nil)
    {
        _keyboardDismissGestureRecognizer = [[[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc]
                                       initWithTarget:self
                                       action:@selector(dismissKeyboard)] autorelease];
        _keyboardDismissGestureRecognizer.cancelsTouchesInView = NO;

        [self.view addGestureRecognizer:_keyboardDismissGestureRecognizer];
    }
}

Then the trick is in how you set up the dismissKeyboard method:

- (void) dismissKeyboard
{
    [self performSelector:@selector(dismissKeyboardSelector) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.01];
}

- (void) dismissKeyboardSelector
{
    [self.view endEditing:YES];

    [self.view removeGestureRecognizer:_keyboardDismissGestureRecognizer];
    _keyboardDismissGestureRecognizer = nil;
}

I guess there's just something about getting the dismissKeyboardSelector execution out of the touch handling execution stack...

Answer 6

You'll need to add an UITapGestureRecogniser and assign it to the view, and then call resign first responder on the UITextField on it's selector.

The code:

In viewDidLoad

UITapGestureRecognizer *tap = [[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(dismissKeyboard)];

[self.view addGestureRecognizer:tap];

In dismissKeyboard:

-(void)dismissKeyboard 
{
    [aTextField resignFirstResponder];
}

(Where aTextField is the textfield that is responsible for the keyboard)

Swift 3 version looks like that

let tapGesture = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(self.dismissKeyboard (_:)))
self.view.addGestureRecognizer(tapGesture)

For dismissKeyboard

func dismissKeyboard (_ sender: UITapGestureRecognizer) {
    aTextField.resignFirstResponder()
}