UITextView

Set attributed text

// Modify some of the attributes of the attributed string.
let attributedText = NSMutableAttributedString(attributedString: textView.attributedText!)

// Use NSString so the result of rangeOfString is an NSRange.
let text = textView.text! as NSString

// Find the range of each element to modify.
let tintedRange = text.range(of: NSLocalizedString("tinted", comment: ""))
let highlightedRange = text.range(of: NSLocalizedString("highlighted", comment: ""))

// Add tint.
attributedText.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: UIColor.blue, range: tintedRange)

// Add highlight.
attributedText.addAttribute(NSBackgroundColorAttributeName, value: UIColor.yellow, range: highlightedRange)

textView.attributedText = attributedText

Change font

Swift

//System Font
textView.font = UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 12)

//Font of your choosing
textView.font = UIFont(name: "Font Name", size: 12)

Objective-C

//System Font
textView.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:12];

//Font of your choosing
textView.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Font Name" size:12];

Auto Detect Links, Addresses, Dates, and more

UITextView has built in support to auto detect a variety of data. The data that is able to be auto-detected currently includes:

enum {
   UIDataDetectorTypePhoneNumber   = 1 << 0,
   UIDataDetectorTypeLink          = 1 << 1,
   UIDataDetectorTypeAddress       = 1 << 2,
   UIDataDetectorTypeCalendarEvent = 1 << 3,
   UIDataDetectorTypeNone          = 0,
   UIDataDetectorTypeAll           = NSUIntegerMax
};

Enabling auto-detection

// you may add as many as you like by using the `|` operator between options
textView.dataDetectorTypes = (UIDataDetectorTypeLink | UIDataDetectorTypePhoneNumber);

If enabled, the text will appear as a hyperlink on the UITextView

Clickable data

To allow the link to be clicked (which will result in different actions depending on the data type) you must ensure that the UITextView is selectable but not editable and that user interaction is enabled

textView.editable = NO;
textView.selectable = YES;
textView.userInteractionEnabled = YES; // YES by default

Change text

Swift

textView.text = "Hello, world!"

Objective-C:

textView.text = @"Hello, world!";

Change text alignment

Swift

textView.textAlignment = .left

Objective-C

textView.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentLeft;

UITextViewDelegate methods

Responding to Editing Notifications

• textViewShouldBeginEditing(_:)
• textViewDidBeginEditing(_:)
• textViewShouldEndEditing(_:)
• textViewDidEndEditing(_:)

Responding to Text Changes

• textView(_:shouldChangeTextIn:replacementText:)
• textViewDidChange(_:)

Responding to URL

• textView(_: UITextView, shouldInteractWithURL: NSURL, inRange: NSRange) -> Bool

Change text color

Swift

textView.textColor = UIColor.red

Objective-C

textView.textColor = [UIColor redColor];

UITextView with HTML text

NSString *htmlString = @"<p> This is an <b>HTML</b> text</p>";
NSAttributedString *attributedString = [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc]
                                                        initWithData: [htmlString dataUsingEncoding:NSUnicodeStringEncoding]
                                                        options: @{ NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute: NSHTMLTextDocumentType }
                                                        documentAttributes: nil
                                                        error: nil
                                                        ];
                _yourTextView.attributedText = attributedString;
                // If you want to modify the font
                field.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Raleway-Regular" size:15];

Check to see if empty or nil

Swift

if let text = self.textView.text where !text.isEmpty {
    // Do stuff for text
} else {
    // Do stuff for nil text or empty string
}

Objective-C

if (self.textView.text.length > 0){
    // Do stuff for text
}   else {
    // Do stuff for nil text or empty string
}

Getting and Setting the Cursor Postition

Useful information

The very beginning of the text field text:

let startPosition: UITextPosition = textView.beginningOfDocument

The very end of the text field text:

let endPosition: UITextPosition = textView.endOfDocument

The currently selected range:

let selectedRange: UITextRange? = textView.selectedTextRange

Get cursor position

if let selectedRange = textView.selectedTextRange {

    let cursorPosition = textView.offsetFromPosition(textView.beginningOfDocument, toPosition: selectedRange.start)

    print("\(cursorPosition)")
}

Set cursor position

In order to set the position, all of these methods are actually setting a range with the same start and end values.

To the beginning

let newPosition = textView.beginningOfDocument
textView.selectedTextRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(newPosition, toPosition: newPosition)

To the end

let newPosition = textView.endOfDocument
textView.selectedTextRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(newPosition, toPosition: newPosition)

To one position to the left of the current cursor position

// only if there is a currently selected range
if let selectedRange = textView.selectedTextRange {

    // and only if the new position is valid
    if let newPosition = textView.positionFromPosition(selectedRange.start, inDirection: UITextLayoutDirection.Left, offset: 1) {

        // set the new position
        textView.selectedTextRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(newPosition, toPosition: newPosition)
    }
}

To an arbitrary position

Start at the beginning and move 5 characters to the right.

let arbitraryValue: Int = 5
if let newPosition = textView.positionFromPosition(textView.beginningOfDocument, inDirection: UITextLayoutDirection.Right, offset: arbitraryValue) {

    textView.selectedTextRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(newPosition, toPosition: newPosition)
}

Related

Select all text

textView.selectedTextRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(textView.beginningOfDocument, toPosition: textView.endOfDocument)

Select a range of text

// Range: 3 to 7
let startPosition = textView.positionFromPosition(textView.beginningOfDocument, inDirection: UITextLayoutDirection.Right, offset: 3)
let endPosition = textView.positionFromPosition(textView.beginningOfDocument, inDirection: UITextLayoutDirection.Right, offset: 7)

if startPosition != nil && endPosition != nil {
    textView.selectedTextRange = textView.textRangeFromPosition(startPosition!, toPosition: endPosition!)
}

Insert text at the current cursor position

textView.insertText("Hello")

Notes

This example originally comes from an adaptation of [this Stack Overflow answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/34922332/3681880).

This answer uses a text field, but the same concepts apply to `UITextView`.

Use `textView.becomeFirstResponder()` to give focus to the text field and make the keyboard appear.

See [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/34940034/3681880) for how to get the text at some range.

Related

• How to Create a Range in Swift (Deals indirectly with the issue of why we have to use selectedTextRange here rather than just selectedRange)

Remove extra paddings to fit to a precisely measured text.

UITextView has extra paddings by default. Sometimes it’s annoying especially if you want to measure some text without view instance and place them at some area precisely.

Do this to remove such paddings.

messageTextView.textContainerInset = UIEdgeInsetsZero
messageTextView.textContainer.lineFragmentPadding = 0

Now you can measure text size using NSAttributedString.boundingRectWithSize(...), and resize a UITextView just to fit it to the text.

let budget = getSomeCGSizeBudget()
let text = getSomeAttributedString()
let textSize = text.boundingRectWithSize(budget, options: [.UsesLineFragmentOrigin, .UsesFontLeading], context: nil).size
messageTextView.frame.size = textSize // Just fits.