Make NSTextField accept return & enter without ending editing

Question

I'm currently coding a text editor in swift and I'm having trouble with inserting a new line ("\n") when pressing enter/return.

By now, when pressing enter, the textField inserts a new line but ends editing with no reason.

Here is my function which will only be called when enter is pressed.

@IBAction func textFieldAction(_ sender: NSTextField) {
    self.textField?.stringValue.append("\n")
    self.textField?.selectAll(nil)
}

If there is more of my code needed the whole file can be found here: https://github.com/notalent/manuscript-mac/blob/master/Manuscript/Document.swift

Because as far as I know you can't set an (attributed) placeholder for NSTextView — Ezekiel, Mar 04 '17 at 01:34
Yes, you can and it's easier than you might think: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29428594/set-the-placeholder-string-for-nstextview/43028577#43028577 ;-) — JanApotheker, Aug 15 '18 at 08:53

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

I think the correct answer is "don't use NSTextField; use NSTextView". NSTextField wasn't designed to do what you're trying to do. The Cocoa Text Architecture Guide has a bunch of information on both NSTextField and NSTextView. See also this question here on SO.

But, if you insist on using NSTextField, you can implement the delegate method control:textView:doCommandBySelector: to provide special handling of return/enter keys (among other things) in an NSTextField. See Apple's Technical Q&A QA1454, "How to make NSTextField accept tab, return and enter keys".

Seriously, though... just use NSTextView. :)

Make NSTextField accept return & enter without ending editing

1 Answers1