How to set the color of the place holder text for a UITextField while preserving its existing properties?

Question

I have seen some answers that show how to change the placeHolder text color for UITextField by overriding the drawPlaceholderInRect: method such as this one:

iPhone UITextField - Change placeholder text color

but that does not maintain the existing attributes such as alignment, font, etc...what is a better way to solve this?

Answer 1

From iOS 6,

Without any subclassing, one can accomplish this with a couple lines of code like so:

UIColor *color = [UIColor blackColor];
textField.attributedPlaceholder = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:placeholderText attributes:@{NSForegroundColorAttributeName: color}];

Answer 2

There are multiple ways to achieve this.

Using Interface Builder or Storyboard

• Select the Textfield for which you want to change placeholder color
• go to the Identity inspector menu on Top right of Xcode
• Add the key value pair this way

Key path = _placeholderLabel.textColor

Click the Type and chose Color attribute .

Then select the color in value.

Set The placeholder color using code :

Process 1:

[textField setValue:[UIColor blueColor] forKeyPath:@"_placeholderLabel.textColor"];

Process 2 :

Override drawPlaceholderInRect:(CGRect)rect method

- (void) drawPlaceholderInRect:(CGRect)rect {
    [[UIColor blueColor] setFill];
    [[self placeholder] drawInRect:rect withFont:[UIFont systemFontOfSize:14]];
}