UISearchBar Keyboard Return Key

Question

I am using a UISearchBar to match text input against entries in a database and display the matched results to the user in a UITableView, as they type.

All is well, however, I cannot find a way to alter the return key type of the search bar's keyboard. By default it replaces the standard return key with a Search button. Because I am doing a live search as the user types, I do not need this button and having it there and inactive has raised some usability issues.

Attempted solutions

1. I can set a keyboard with the setKeyboard:UIKeyboardType method, however this doesn't seem to override the default setting of replacing the return key (on the standard keyboard) with a Search key and it does not allow access to change this return key.

2. I have thought about using a UITextField, giving me access to the returnKeyType property through the UITextInputTraits protocol. My problem with this however is that I am implementing the UISearchBarDelegate method searchBar:(UISearchBar *)searchBar textDidChange:(NSString *)searchText, which I would lose with the UITextField.

Is there a way that I can keep the functionality of the search bar's delegate methods, whilst having legitimate access to the keyboard's return key?

In fact, almost the exact screen I am implementing is found in Apple's Clock application
Screenshot:

So any help on a clean solution would be much appreciated. Note the return key on the bottom right instead of the default Search button'.

Answer 1

Slightly different in iOS 7 compared to the answer of @sudip.

for (UIView *subview in self.searchBar.subviews)
{
    for (UIView *subSubview in subview.subviews)
    {
        if ([subSubview conformsToProtocol:@protocol(UITextInputTraits)])
        {
            UITextField *textField = (UITextField *)subSubview;
            [textField setKeyboardAppearance: UIKeyboardAppearanceAlert];
            textField.returnKeyType = UIReturnKeyDone;
            break;
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

I tried all of these solutions without luck until I realized that in IOS8, you can just set searchBar.returnKey = .Done or whatever UIReturnKeyType you like. Sigh.

Answer 3

Try this:

for(UIView *subView in searchBar.subviews) {
    if([subView conformsToProtocol:@protocol(UITextInputTraits)]) {
        [(UITextField *)subView setKeyboardAppearance: UIKeyboardAppearanceAlert];
    }
}

If you want to dismiss the return key (i.e., make it do nothing), set the "returnKeyType" property on the UITextField subview to "UIReturnKeyDone" along with "keyboardAppearence".

Answer 4

I had to add some lines to Neo's answer. Here is my code to add a "Done" button for UISearchbar :

for(UIView *subView in sb_manSearch.subviews) {
    if([subView conformsToProtocol:@protocol(UITextInputTraits)]) {

        UITextField *t = (UITextField *)subView;
        [t setKeyboardAppearance: UIKeyboardAppearanceAlert];

        t.returnKeyType = UIReturnKeyDone;
        t.delegate = self;
        break;
    }
}