UISearchBar change placeholder color

Question

Has anyone any idea or code sample on how can I change the text color of the placeholder text of a UISearchBar?

Answer 1

for iOS5+ use the appearance proxy

[[UILabel appearanceWhenContainedIn:[UISearchBar class], nil] setTextColor:[UIColor redColor]];

Answer 2

Found the answer from Change UITextField's placeholder text color programmatically

// Get the instance of the UITextField of the search bar
UITextField *searchField = [searchBar valueForKey:@"_searchField"];

// Change search bar text color
searchField.textColor = [UIColor redColor];

// Change the search bar placeholder text color
[searchField setValue:[UIColor blueColor] forKeyPath:@"_placeholderLabel.textColor"];

Answer 3

First solution is OK, but if you use multiple UISearchBar, or create a lot of instances it may fail. The one solution that always work for me is to use also appearance proxy but directly on UITextField

   NSDictionary *placeholderAttributes = @{
                                            NSForegroundColorAttributeName: [UIColor darkButtonColor],
                                            NSFontAttributeName: [UIFont fontWithName:@"HelveticaNeue" size:15],
                                            };

    NSAttributedString *attributedPlaceholder = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:self.searchBar.placeholder
                                                                                attributes:placeholderAttributes];

    [[UITextField appearanceWhenContainedInInstancesOfClasses:@[[UISearchBar class]]] setAttributedPlaceholder:attributedPlaceholder];

Answer 4

Here is a Solution for Swift:

Swift 2

var textFieldInsideSearchBar = searchBar.valueForKey("searchField") as? UITextField
textFieldInsideSearchBar?.textColor = UIColor.whiteColor()

var textFieldInsideSearchBarLabel = textFieldInsideSearchBar!.valueForKey("placeholderLabel") as? UILabel
textFieldInsideSearchBarLabel?.textColor = UIColor.whiteColor()

Swift 3

let textFieldInsideSearchBar = searchBar.value(forKey: "searchField") as? UITextField
textFieldInsideSearchBar?.textColor = UIColor.white

let textFieldInsideSearchBarLabel = textFieldInsideSearchBar!.value(forKey: "placeholderLabel") as? UILabel
textFieldInsideSearchBarLabel?.textColor = UIColor.white