Disable UITextField keyboard?

Question

I put a numeric keypad in my app for inputing numbers into a text view, but in order to input numbers I have to click on the text view. Once I do so, the regular keyboard comes up, which I don't want.

How can I disable the keyboard altogether? Any help is greatly appreciated.

score 107 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 02 '11 at 01:07

107

The UITextField's inputView property is nil by default, which means the standard keyboard gets displayed.

If you assign it a custom input view, or just a dummy view then the keyboard will not appear, but the blinking cursor will still appear:

UIView* dummyView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 1, 1)];    
myTextField.inputView = dummyView; // Hide keyboard, but show blinking cursor

If you want to hide both the keyboard and the blinking cursor then use this approach:

-(BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
    return NO;  // Hide both keyboard and blinking cursor.
}

answered Dec 02 '11 at 01:07

RohinNZ

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Caleb's answer below explains this, but I wanted to add that any `UIView` can be set as the `inputView`. This will cause the view to animate in and animate out the same way the standard keyboard does. – BreadicalMD Jun 07 '13 at 15:43
This is useful when developing a custom keyboard app extension. If you include a UISearchBar or a UITextField in the custom keyboard, it will try to show the keyboard (although it IS IN a keyboard), so that means it will kill your current keyboard as of its views / controllers hierarchy and then recreate it. I solved it with the help with this old-school hack. Thank you! – CSolanaM Oct 22 '14 at 20:38
Finally I used a cleaner approach using the appearance proxy, but relying the same concept: [[UITextField appearanceWhenContainedIn:[UISearchBar class], nil] setInputView:[UIView new]]; – CSolanaM Oct 22 '14 at 21:22
This works but if you use Mac keyboard to write in UITextfield the app crashes. Its not a good solution. – Norolim Mar 20 '17 at 14:51

Martin Romañuk · Answer 2 · 2019-09-04T17:57:25.560

74

For Swift 2.x, 3.x, 4.x, 5.x

textField.inputView = UIView()

does the trick

edited Sep 04 '19 at 17:57

answered Dec 17 '15 at 21:57

Martin Romañuk

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Martin and Satish did it again – Pavlos Oct 24 '17 at 18:41
You can hide the accessoryView with `textField.inputAccessoryView = UIView()` and you can hide the cursor with `textField.tintColor = .white` as well (Swift 5.x). – Brian L Jan 11 '21 at 01:46
1

OutStanding working for me...... – M Hamayun zeb Mar 18 '22 at 10:36

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 11 '11 at 01:24

5

If it's a UITextField, you can set it's enabled property to NO.

If it's a UITextView, you can implement -textViewShouldBeginEditing: in its delegate to return NO, so that it'll never start editing. Or you can subclass it and override -canBecomeFirstResponder to return NO. Or you could take advantage of its editing behavior and put your numeric buttons into a view which you use as the text view's inputView. This is supposed to cause the buttons to be displayed when the text view is edited. That may or may not be what you want.

edited Apr 11 '11 at 01:24

Noah Witherspoon

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answered Apr 11 '11 at 01:14

Caleb

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its a text field btw. Well this is how i getting the buttons to write in the specific textfield, setting flags and calling if (current.tag == 10) { textfieldflag = 1; [loanAmount setUserInteractionEnabled:NO]; [period setUserInteractionEnabled:YES]; [interest setUserInteractionEnabled:YES]; //[deposit setUserInteractionEnabled:YES]; loanAmount.editable = NO; } – michael Apr 11 '11 at 01:38
wohoo, got it to work. Thanks for that, something so simple and google didnt have the answer. – michael Apr 11 '11 at 01:40

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 11 '11 at 01:19

4

Depending on how you have your existing buttons working this could break them, but you could prevent the keyboard from showing up setting the textView's editable property to NO

myTextView.editable = NO

answered Apr 11 '11 at 01:19

jcane86

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He asked for UITextField, not UITextView – Sebyddd May 17 '14 at 08:32

David · Answer 5 · 2016-07-25T22:27:29.040

I have the same problem when had 2 textfields on the same view. My purpose was to show a default keyboard for one textfield and hide for second and show instead a dropdown list.

- (BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField

method simply did not work as I expected for 2 textfields , the only workaround I found was

    UIView* dummyView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 1, 1)];    
    myTextField.inputView = dummyView; 
    myTextField.inputAccessoryView = dummyView; 
    myTextField.tintColor =  myTextField.backgroundColor; //to hide a blinking cursor

This will totally hide the keyboard for a target textField (DropDownList in my case) and show a default one when user switches to the 2nd textfield (Account number on my screenshot)

Your answer is really great! Because it has the solution with setting inputAccessoryView to dummyView. I was struggling- how to hide it from the bottom of the screen. — Vitya Shurapov, Dec 25 '18 at 18:14

Nischal Revooru · Answer 6 · 2019-10-19T18:06:51.943

1

There is a simple hack to it. Place a empty button (No Text) above the keyboard and have a action Event assign to it. This will stop keyboard coming up and you can perform any action you want in the handle for the button click

edited Oct 19 '19 at 18:06

answered Oct 19 '19 at 18:01

Nischal Revooru

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Abdulrazzaq Alzayed · Answer 7 · 2016-07-14T21:08:37.903

0

To disable UITextField keyboard:

Go to Main.Storyboard
Click on the UITextField to select it
Show the Attributes inspector
Uncheck the User Interaction Enabled

To disable UITextView keyboard:

Go to Main.Storyboard
Click on the UITextView to select it
Show the Attributes inspector
Uncheck the Editable Behavior

edited Jul 14 '16 at 21:08

answered Jul 14 '16 at 20:35

Abdulrazzaq Alzayed

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If you will do this textfield will be untouchable. So you cannot click and write any stuff. – Yucel Bayram Dec 08 '16 at 13:52

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 22 '20 at 06:37

I used the keyboardWillShow Notification and textField.endEditing(true):

lazy var myTextField: UITextField = {
    let textField = UITextField()
    // ....
    return textField
}()

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(keyboardWillShow(_:)), name: UIResponder.keyboardWillShowNotification, object: nil)
}

@objc func keyboardWillShow(_ notification: Notification) {
        
    myTextField.endEditing(true)

    // if using a textView >>> myTextView.endEditing(true) <<<
}

score -2 · Answer 9 · edited Oct 28 '16 at 14:24

-2

private void TxtExpiry_EditingDidBegin(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        ((UITextField)sender).ResignFirstResponder();
    }

In C# this worked for me, I don't use the storyboard.

edited Oct 28 '16 at 14:24

User42

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answered Oct 28 '16 at 13:07

score -3 · Answer 10 · answered Dec 22 '16 at 23:17

In Xcode 8.2 you can do it easily by unchecking state "enabled" option.

Click on the textField you want to be uneditable
Go to attirube inspector on right side
Uncheck "enabled" for State

Or if you want to do it via code. You can simply create an @IBOutlet of this text field, give it a name and then use this variable name in the viewDidLoad func (or any custom one if you intent to) like this (in swift 3.0.1):

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    // Do any additional setup after loading the view.

    myTextField.isEditable = false
}

isEditable doesn't exist – Andrea.Ferrando Jan 16 '19 at 14:58 — Andrea.Ferrando, Jan 16 '19 at 14:58

Disable UITextField keyboard?

10 Answers10

To disable UITextField keyboard:

To disable UITextView keyboard:

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