Adding the "Clear" Button to an iPhone UITextField

Question

This button is a built-in overlay that is provided by the UITextField class, but as of the iOS 2.2 SDK, there isn't any way to set it via Interface Builder. You have to enable it programmatically.

Add this line of code somewhere (viewDidLoad, for example):

Objective-C

myUITextField.clearButtonMode = UITextFieldViewModeWhileEditing;

Swift 5.0

myUITextField.clearButtonMode = .whileEditing

You can also set this directly from Interface Builder under the Attributes Inspector.

Taken from XCode 5.1

Swift 4+:

textField.clearButtonMode = UITextField.ViewMode.whileEditing

or even shorter:

textField.clearButtonMode = .whileEditing

you can add custom clear button and control the size and every thing using this:

UIButton *clearButton = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
[clearButton setImage:img forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[clearButton setFrame:frame];
[clearButton addTarget:self action:@selector(clearTextField:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

textField.rightViewMode = UITextFieldViewModeAlways; //can be changed to UITextFieldViewModeNever,    UITextFieldViewModeWhileEditing,   UITextFieldViewModeUnlessEditing
[textField setRightView:clearButton];

Objective C :

self.txtUserNameTextfield.myUITextField.clearButtonMode = UITextFieldViewModeWhileEditing;

Swift :

txtUserNameTextfield.clearButtonMode = UITextField.ViewMode.WhileEditing;