UITextView disabling text selection

Question

I'm having a hard time getting the UITextView to disable the selecting of the text.

I've tried:

canCancelContentTouches = YES;

I've tried subclassing and overwriting:

- (BOOL)canPerformAction:(SEL)action withSender:(id)sender

(But that gets called only After the selection)

- (BOOL)touchesShouldCancelInContentView:(UIView *)view;

(I don't see that getting fired at all)

- (BOOL)touchesShouldBegin:(NSSet *)touches
                 withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
             inContentView:(UIView *)view;

(I don't see that getting fired either)

What am I missing?

Since it's impossible to add answers to this: note the BEST answer here (IMHO) is actually a comment by Alexander: since iOS 7 there is a @property(nonatomic,getter=isSelectable) BOOL selectable NS_AVAILABLE_IOS(7_0) — Epaga, Feb 23 '14 at 17:14
I got the question reopened and added `selectable` as a proper answer. Yay! — Heath Borders, Feb 11 '16 at 20:34

score 76 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

76

Issue How disable Copy, Cut, Select, Select All in UITextView has a workable solution to this that I've just implemented and verified:

Subclass UITextView and overwrite canBecomeFirstResponder:

- (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder {
    return NO;
}

Note that this disables links and other tappable text content.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

Community

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answered Oct 28 '10 at 01:07

Dafydd Williams

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If you don't want any user interaction at all, yes. – Dafydd Williams Oct 02 '12 at 00:46
good point. However it also disables the input cursor. Is there a way of allowing the cursor, but not allowing text selection? – jowie Feb 26 '13 at 16:34
You can also avoid the subclassing step and just use a category in the same UIViewController where your UITextView lives. (I wouldn't bet on this working forever though) (a)implementation UITextView (NoSelection) - (BOOL)canBecomeFirstResponder { return NO; } (a)end – rob5408 Mar 21 '13 at 17:23
11

Have you tried to use the property selectable? @property(nonatomic,getter=isSelectable) BOOL selectable NS_AVAILABLE_IOS(7_0); // toggle selectability, which controls the ability of the user to select content and interact with URLs & attachments – Alexander Dec 02 '13 at 15:56
That's very useful, @Alexander - thanks! canBecomeFirstResponder is still a good solution if you need to target iOS versions prior to 7, though. – Dafydd Williams Dec 05 '13 at 22:50
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This disables links, etc. – junglecat Feb 28 '14 at 17:12
A good point. In my case, I wanted links disabled, so I wasn't too fussed about that. – Dafydd Williams Mar 21 '14 at 00:18
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Anyone know of a solution that does not disable links but does disable highlighting? I tried overriding long-press but that seems to disable link tapping as well... – Trespassers W May 15 '14 at 22:51
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@TrespassersW overwrite - (void)textViewDidChangeSelection:(UITextView *)textView and set textView.selectedRange = NSMakeRange(0, 0); can accomplish this – Pepsin Feb 23 '15 at 10:32
seems like in iOS 10, this code disable selection and keep links & scrolling working at same time – He Yifei 何一非 Jan 14 '17 at 07:47
Even when disabling selection, user can still long-press and 'drag away' the url. In cases where this was meant to act as a button (and the URL, private), this behavior sure hammers in the final nail. – bauerMusic Feb 12 '19 at 15:35

score 47 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 07 '14 at 06:14

47

I've found that calling

[textView setUserInteractionEnabled:NO];

works quite well.

edited Feb 07 '14 at 06:14

Charles

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answered Apr 17 '11 at 03:08

James M

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This will also disable the scrolling feature on UITextView – Matt Chuang Dec 30 '11 at 19:56
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And disable the ability to click links – barfoon Feb 09 '12 at 22:09
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I use the uitextview as a subview in a custom uitableviewcell. It works like a dream – Zoltan Varadi Aug 17 '12 at 11:36

score 21 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 11 '16 at 20:34

21

UITextView's selectable property:

This property controls the ability of the user to select content and interact with URLs and text attachments. The default value is YES.

answered Feb 11 '16 at 20:34

Heath Borders

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It seems like there is no setter in objective-C? – ArielSD May 08 '19 at 15:23
`-[UITextView isSelectable]`: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uitextview/1618627-selectable?language=objc – Heath Borders May 08 '19 at 20:18
That looks like just the `get` - I'm seeing compiler errors when trying to set? `textView.isSelectable = NO;` – ArielSD May 08 '19 at 20:20
That's because `-isSelectable` is the name of the getter only. Use `-[UITextView setSelectable:]` to set it. With property syntax, both the getter and setter are `selectable`. `BOOL foo = textView.selectable;` or `textView.selectable = bar;` – Heath Borders May 10 '19 at 05:14
This one also disables links – Mellao Sep 03 '21 at 08:29

score 15 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 20 '22 at 13:06

15

Swift 4, Xcode 10

This solution will

disable highlighting
enable tapping links
allow scrolling

Make sure you set the delegate to YourViewController

yourTextView.delegate = yourViewControllerInstance

Then

extension YourViewController: UITextViewDelegate {

    func textViewDidChangeSelection(_ textView: UITextView) {
        if #available(iOS 13, *) {
            textView.selectedTextRange = nil
        } else {
            view.endEditing(true)
        }
    }

}

edited Feb 20 '22 at 13:06

Roman Podymov

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answered Nov 04 '18 at 18:53

Ted

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It does not work for me in iOS 13. Instead of `view.endEditing(true)` use `textView.selectedTextRange = nil` – Evgeny Karev Dec 11 '19 at 13:31
@EvgenyKarev Please add your comment as an answer. – Roman Podymov Jan 23 '22 at 13:47
if you use it on UITableViewCell then write contentView.endEditing(true) instead of view.endEditing(true) – Mohammad Daihan Jul 20 '22 at 08:03

aaronmbmorse · Answer 5 · 2019-03-01T03:40:34.890

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Swift 4, Xcode 10:

If you want to make it so the user isn't able to select or edit the text.

This makes it so it can not be edited:

textView.isEditable = false

This disables all user interaction:

textView.isUserInteractionEnabled = false

This makes it so that you can't select it. Meaning it will not show the edit or paste options. I think this is what you are looking for.

textView.isSelectable = false

edited Mar 01 '19 at 03:40

answered Mar 01 '19 at 03:22

aaronmbmorse

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score 9 · Answer 6 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

9

It sounds like what you actually want is a giant UILabel inside a UIScrollView, and not a UITextView.

update: if you are on newer versions of iOS UILabel now has a lines property:

Multiple lines of text in UILabel

edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

Community

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answered Oct 28 '09 at 21:04

slf

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Yea I guess. Will be the next thing I do if I don't figure this out. – dizy Oct 28 '09 at 21:06
thanx dude, I don't know about dizy, but I actually needed a UILabel. – Ilya Saunkin Mar 10 '11 at 12:50
UILabel will prevent the line-breaks. You want a UITextView with no user interaction enabled... and then you want that inside of a UIScrollView. Alternatively, you could display a transparent UIWebView with your text in a textView in the UIWebView (just use loadHTML to import your text/code into the UIWebView (including the CSS code to make the background transparent) then you can use javascript to make it not selectable but still scrollable). – Albert Renshaw May 01 '13 at 16:18
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@AlbertRenshaw I don't think your first sentence is correct. A quick Google seems to indicate that UILabel supports line breaks just fine. – Mark Amery Aug 22 '13 at 11:59
@MarkAmery Wow! I never knew! UILabel has a "lines" property that is on "1" by default... so if you put in multiple lines nothing will happen, you have to modify the "lines" property to a higher number to support multiple lines! Neat :) – Albert Renshaw Aug 22 '13 at 15:48
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@AlbertRenshaw Don't make it higher - set it to 0 instead, and then you can have as many lines as you like. – Mark Amery Aug 22 '13 at 16:37
@MarkAmery you just made my day! Thankyou for the tip, that helps so much with future projects! Haha! :) +1 – Albert Renshaw Aug 23 '13 at 18:08

score 5 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 28 '09 at 19:28

5

If you just want to prevent it from being edited, then set the UITextView's "editable" property to NO/False.

If you're trying to leave it editable but not selectable, that's going to be tricky. You might need to create a hidden textview that the user can type into and then have UITextView observe that hidden textview and populate itself with the textview's text.

answered Oct 28 '09 at 19:28

TechZen

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This is what I did for a non editable / selected text field: class – Krivvenz Sep 24 '15 at 12:31

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 15 '17 at 13:24

3

To do this first subclass the UITextView

and in the implementation do the following

- (void)touchesBegan:(NSSet<UITouch *> *)touches withEvent:(nullable UIEvent *)event
{
    self.selectable = NO;
}

- (void)touchesCancelled:(nullable NSSet<UITouch *> *)touches withEvent:(nullable UIEvent *)event
{
        self.selectable = YES;
 }

this should work fine,

answered Apr 15 '17 at 13:24

SadCS

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This disables links too – Ted Nov 04 '18 at 18:32

mahboudz · Answer 9 · 2009-10-29T03:51:49.623

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Did you try setting userInteractionEnabled to NO for your UITextView? But you'd lose scrolling too.

If you need scrolling, which is probably why you used a UITextView and not a UILabel, then you need to do more work. You'll probably have to override canPerformAction:withSender: to return NO for actions that you don't want to allow:

- (BOOL)canPerformAction:(SEL)action withSender:(id)sender
{
    switch (action) {
        case @selector(paste:):
        case @selector(copy:):
        case @selector(cut:):
        case @selector(cut:):
        case @selector(select:):
        case @selector(selectAll:):
        return NO;
    }
    return [super canPerformAction:action withSender:sender];
}

For more, UIResponderStandardEditActions .

edited Oct 29 '09 at 03:51

answered Oct 28 '09 at 19:32

mahboudz

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I mentioned that I already tried that :) canPerform doesn't get called until after you make the selection – dizy Oct 29 '09 at 04:06
Downvote: this won't prevent the cut/copy/define toolbar from appearing - there are better solutions listed on this page. – Gerard Mar 29 '16 at 10:00

Cœur · Answer 10 · 2018-03-28T18:04:49.447

You can disable text selection by subclassing UITextView.

The below solution is:

compatible with isScrollEnabled
compatible with loupe/magnifier
but not compatible with links (see here for a solution compatible with links)

/// Class to disallow text selection
/// while keeping support for loupe/magnifier and scrolling
/// https://stackoverflow.com/a/49428248/1033581
class UnselectableTextView: UITextView {

    override init(frame: CGRect, textContainer: NSTextContainer?) {
        super.init(frame: frame, textContainer: textContainer)
        commonInit()
    }
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        commonInit()
    }
    private func commonInit() {
        // prevents selection from loupe/magnifier (_UITextSelectionForceGesture), multi tap, tap and a half, etc.
        // without losing the loupe/magnifier or scrolling
        // but we lose taps on links
        addSubview(transparentOverlayView)
    }
    let transparentOverlayView: UIView = {
        $0.backgroundColor = .clear
        $0.autoresizingMask = [.flexibleHeight, .flexibleWidth]
        return $0
    }(UIView())
    override var contentSize: CGSize {
        didSet {
            transparentOverlayView.frame = CGRect(origin: .zero, size: contentSize)
        }
    }

    // required to prevent blue background selection from any situation
    override var selectedTextRange: UITextRange? {
        get { return nil }
        set {}
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Oct 22 '18 at 09:08

0

For swift, there is a property called "isSelectable" and its by default assign to true

you can use it as follow:

textView.isSelectable = false

answered Oct 22 '18 at 09:08

Mohammed Ali Khaled

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UITextView disabling text selection

11 Answers11

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