UITextView starts at Bottom or Middle of the text

Question

I'll get right to it. I have a UItextView placed in my view that when needs to scroll to see all the text (when a lot of text is present in the textView) the textView starts in the middle of the text sometimes and the bottom of the text other times.

Editing is not enabled on the textView. I need a way to force the textView to start at the top, every time. I saw some questions somewhat like this where other people used a content offset, but I do not really know how that works or if it would even be applicable here.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

That did the trick for me!

Objective C:

[self.textView scrollRangeToVisible:NSMakeRange(0, 0)];

Swift:

self.textView.scrollRangeToVisible(NSMakeRange(0, 0))

Swift 2 (Alternate Solution)

Add this override method to your ViewController

override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
    super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()
    textView.setContentOffset(CGPointZero, animated: false)
}

Swift 3 & 4 (syntax edit)

override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
  super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()

  textView.contentOffset = .zero
}

Answer 2

All of the answers above did not work for me. However, the secret turns out to be to implement your solution within an override of viewDidLayoutSubviews, as in:

override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
  super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()

  welcomeText.contentOffset = .zero
}

HTH :)

Answer 3

In Swift 2

You can use this to make the textView start from the top:

override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
    super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()

    myTextView.setContentOffset(CGPointZero, animated: false)
}

Confirmed working in Xcode 7.2 with Swift 2

Answer 4

Try this below code -

if ( [self respondsToSelector:@selector(setAutomaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets:)]){
     self.automaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets = NO;         
}

Or you can also set this property by StoryBoard -

Select ViewController then select attributes inspector now unchecked Adjust Scroll View Insets.

Answer 5

For Swift >2.2, I had issues with iOS 8 and iOS 9 using above methods as there are no single answer that works so here is what I did to make it work for both.

override func viewWillAppear(animated: Bool) {
    super.viewWillAppear(animated)

    if #available(iOS 9.0, *) {
        textView.scrollEnabled = false
    }

    self.textView.scrollRangeToVisible(NSMakeRange(0, 0))
}

override func viewDidAppear(animated: Bool) {
    super.viewDidAppear(animated)

    if #available(iOS 9.0, *) {
        textView.scrollEnabled = true
    }
}

Answer 6

Update your UINavigationBar's translucent property to NO:

self.navigationController.navigationBar.translucent = NO;

This will fix the view from being framed underneath the navigation bar and status bar.

If you have to show and hide the navigation bar, then use below code in your viewDidLoad

 if ([self respondsToSelector:@selector(edgesForExtendedLayout)])
    self.edgesForExtendedLayout = UIRectEdgeNone;   // iOS 7 specific

Hope this helps.

Answer 7

With a lot of testing, i found must add below in viewWillLayoutSubviews() function to make sure the UITextView show up from the very beginning:

override func viewWillLayoutSubviews() {
    super.viewWillLayoutSubviews()            
    textViewTerms.scrollRangeToVisible(NSMakeRange(0, 0))
}

Answer 8

Xcode 7.2 7c68; IOS 9.1

My ViewController which contains UITextView is complicated, and changed a lot during the project (IDE version changed maybe 2~3 times too).

I've tried all above solutions, if you encounter the same issue, be PATIENT.

There are three possible 'secret codes' to solve:

1. textView.scrollEnabled = false //then set text textView.scrollEnabled = true
2. textView.scrollRangeToVisible(NSMakeRange(0, 0))
3. textView.setContentOffset(CGPointZero, animated: false)

And there are two places you can put those codes in:

1. viewDidLoad()
2. viewDidLayoutSubviews()

Combine them, you'll get 3*2=6 solutions, the correct combination depends on how complicated you ViewController is (Believe me, after delete just a view above textView, I need to find a new combination).

And I found that:

When put 'secret codes' in viewDidLayoutSubviews(), but textView.text = someStrings in viewDidLoad(), the content in textView will 'shake' sometimes. So, put them in the same place.

Last word: try ALL combinations, this is how I solve this stupid bug more than three times during two months.

Answer 9

UITextView scrolling seems to be a problem to a lot of people. Gathering from the answers here around (especially this) and the Apple Developer documentation, using some of my own wit, here is a solution that works for me. You can modify the code to suit your needs.

My use case is as follows: the same UITextView is used for different purposes, displaying varying content in different circumstances. What I want is that when the content changes, the old scroll position is restored, or at times, scrolled to the end. I don't want too much animation when this is done. Especially I don't want the view to animate like all the text was new. This solution first restores the old scroll position without animation, then scrolls to the end animated, if so desired.

What you need to do (or should I say can do) is extend UITextView as follows:

extension UITextView {
  func setText(text: String, storedOffset: CGPoint, scrollToEnd: Bool) {
    self.text = text
    let delayInSeconds = 0.001
    let popTime: dispatch_time_t = dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, Int64(delayInSeconds * Double(NSEC_PER_SEC)))
    dispatch_after(popTime, dispatch_get_main_queue(), {
      self.setContentOffset(storedOffset, animated: false)
      if scrollToEnd && !text.isEmpty {
        let popTime: dispatch_time_t = dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, Int64(delayInSeconds * Double(NSEC_PER_SEC)))
        dispatch_after(popTime, dispatch_get_main_queue(), {
          self.scrollRangeToVisible(NSMakeRange(text.lengthOfBytesUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding) - 1, 0))
        })
      }
    })
  }
}

What this does is it updates the text, then uses a stored value of the UITextView.contentOffset property (or anything you pass as a parameter), and sets the offset of the view accordingly. If desired, after this, it scrolls to the end of the new, potentially changed content.

I'm new to iOS programming and I don't know why it works so well it does, if someone has some information on this it would be nice to know. Also the approach may not be perfect so I'm open to improvement ideas as well.

And of course thanks to NixonsBack for posting the answer behind the link above.

My first post :), cheers!

Answer 10

Put this one line of code in ViewDidLoad

self.automaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets = false

Answer 11

The following code should give you effect you want.

[self.scrollView setContentOffset:CGPointMake(0, -self.scrollView.contentInset.top) animated:YES];

You'll need to replace "self.scrollView" with the name of your scroll view. You should put this code in after you've set the text of the scroll view.

Answer 12

Create an outlet for your UITextView in the ViewController.swift file. In the ViewDidLoad section put the following:

Swift:

self.textView.contentOffset.y = 0

I have tried:

self.textView.scrollRangeToVisible(NSMakeRange(0, 0))

Answer 13

This worked for me:

 override func viewWillLayoutSubviews() {
    super.viewWillLayoutSubviews()
    textView.scrollRectToVisible(CGRect(origin: CGPointZero, size: CGSizeMake(1.0, 1.0)), animated: false)

}

Answer 14

This worked for me with Xcode 8.3.3:

-(void)viewWillLayoutSubviews
{
    [super viewWillLayoutSubviews];
    [self.txtQuestion scrollRangeToVisible:NSMakeRange(0, 0)];
}

Answer 15

I translated zeeple's answer to MonoTouch/Xamarin (C#).

public override void ViewDidLayoutSubviews()
{
    base.ViewDidLayoutSubviews();
    myForm.SetContentOffset(new CoreGraphics.CGPoint(0,0), animated: false);
}

Answer 16

I had to implement two answers here to get my view working as I want:

From Juan David Cruz Serrano:

override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
    super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()
    textView.setContentOffset(CGPoint.zero, animated: false)
}

And from Murat Yasar:

automaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets = false

This gave a UITextView that loads with the scroll at the very top and where the insets are not changed once scrolling starts. Very strange that this is not the default behaviour.

Answer 17

To force the textView to start at the top every time, use the following code:

Swift 4.2:

override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
    textView.setContentOffset(CGPoint(x: 0, y: 0), animated: false)
}

Objective-C:

- (void)viewDidLayoutSubviews {
    [self.yourTextView setContentOffset:CGPointZero animated:NO];
}

Answer 18

Swift 4.2 & Swift 5

set content offset both before and after setting the text. (on the main Thread)

let animation = false //or whatever you want
self.mainTextView.setContentOffset(.zero, animated: animation)
self.mainTextView.attributedText = YOUR_ATTRIBUTED_TEXT
self.mainTextView.setContentOffset(.zero, animated: animation)

Answer 19

In my case I was loading a textView in a Custom tableview cell. Below is what I did to make sure the text in a textview loads at the top of the text in my textview in my custom cell.

1.) In storyboard, set the textview ScrollEnabled = false by unchecking the button.

2.) You set the isScrollEnabled to true on the textview after the view loads. I set mine in a small delay like below:

override func awakeFromNib() {
    super.awakeFromNib()

let when = DispatchTime.now() + 1
      DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: when){
        self.textView.isScrollEnabled = true
     }

}

Regardless, if you are in my situation or not, try setting scrollEnabled to false and then when the view loads, set scrollEnabled to true.