Does UILabel have any value to make it selectable?

Question

Does UILabel have any value that can be set in order to make it selectable?

I have a label that I want to be selectable, (long press and a copy btn shows up) kinda like in Safari.

Answer 1

Self-contained Solution (Swift 5)

You can adapt the solution from @BJHSolutions and NSHipster to make the following self-contained SelectableLabel:

import UIKit

/// Label that allows selection with long-press gesture, e.g. for copy-paste.
class SelectableLabel: UILabel {
    
    override func awakeFromNib() {
        super.awakeFromNib()

        isUserInteractionEnabled = true
        addGestureRecognizer(
            UILongPressGestureRecognizer(
                target: self,
                action: #selector(handleLongPress(_:))
            )
        )
    }

    override var canBecomeFirstResponder: Bool {
        return true
    }
    
    override func canPerformAction(_ action: Selector, withSender sender: Any?) -> Bool {
        return action == #selector(copy(_:))
    }

    // MARK: - UIResponderStandardEditActions
    
    override func copy(_ sender: Any?) {
        UIPasteboard.general.string = text
    }
    
    // MARK: - Long-press Handler
    
    @objc func handleLongPress(_ recognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) {
        if recognizer.state == .began,
            let recognizerView = recognizer.view,
            let recognizerSuperview = recognizerView.superview {
            recognizerView.becomeFirstResponder()
            UIMenuController.shared.setTargetRect(recognizerView.frame, in: recognizerSuperview)
            UIMenuController.shared.setMenuVisible(true, animated:true)
        }
    }
    
}

Answer 2

Yes, you need to implement a UIMenuController from a long press gesture applied to your UILabel. There is an excellent article about this on NSHipster, but the gist of the article is the following.

Create a subclass of UILabel and implement the following methods:

override func canBecomeFirstResponder() -> Bool {
    return true
}

override func canPerformAction(action: Selector, withSender sender: AnyObject?) -> Bool {
    return (action == "copy:")
}

// MARK: - UIResponderStandardEditActions

override func copy(sender: AnyObject?) {
    UIPasteboard.generalPasteboard().string = text
}

Then in your view controller, you can add a long press gesture to your label:

let gestureRecognizer = UILongPressGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: "handleLongPressGesture:")
label.addGestureRecognizer(gestureRecognizer)

and handle the long press with this method:

func handleLongPressGesture(recognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) {
     if let recognizerView = recognizer.view,
         recognizerSuperView = recognizerView.superview
     {
         let menuController = UIMenuController.sharedMenuController()
         menuController.setTargetRect(recognizerView.frame, inView: recognizerSuperView)
         menuController.setMenuVisible(true, animated:true)
         recognizerView.becomeFirstResponder()
     }}

NOTE: This code is taken directly from the NSHipster article, I am just including it here for SO compliance.