UITextField secureTextEntry bullets with a custom font?

Question

I’m using a custom font in a UITextField, which has secureTextEntry turned on. When I’m typing in the cell, I see the bullets in my chosen font, but when the field loses focus, those bullets revert to the system standard font. If I tap the field again, they change back to my font, and so on.

Is there a way I can ensure that they continue to display the custom font’s bullets, even when the field is out of focus?

Answer 1

A subclass that works this issue around. Create an arbitrary UITextField, then set the secure property to YES (via KVC in IB).

Actually it implements a comment suggested by lukech. When textfield ends editing, it switches to an arbitrary textfield, then set a bulk of dots into, and some hack in text accessor to always get the actual text the field holds.

@interface SecureTextFieldWithCustomFont : UITextField @property (nonatomic) BOOL secure; @property (nonatomic, strong) NSString *actualText; @end   @implementation SecureTextFieldWithCustomFont   -(void)awakeFromNib {     [super awakeFromNib];      if (self.secureTextEntry)     {         // Listen for changes.         [self addTarget:self action:@selector(editingDidBegin) forControlEvents:UIControlEventEditingDidBegin];         [self addTarget:self action:@selector(editingDidChange) forControlEvents:UIControlEventEditingChanged];         [self addTarget:self action:@selector(editingDidFinish) forControlEvents:UIControlEventEditingDidEnd];     } }  -(NSString*)text {     if (self.editing || self.secure == NO)     { return [super text]; }      else     { return self.actualText; } }  -(void)editingDidBegin {     self.secureTextEntry = YES;     self.text = self.actualText; }  -(void)editingDidChange { self.actualText = self.text; }  -(void)editingDidFinish {     self.secureTextEntry = NO;     self.actualText = self.text;     self.text = [self dotPlaceholder]; }  -(NSString*)dotPlaceholder {     int index = 0;     NSMutableString *dots = @"".mutableCopy;     while (index < self.text.length)     { [dots appendString:@"•"]; index++; }     return dots; }   @end 

May be augmented to work with non NIB instantiations, handling default values, etc, but you probably get the idea.

Answer 2

For those having trouble with losing custom fonts when toggling secureTextEntry, I found a work-around (I'm using the iOS 8.4 SDK). I was trying to make a toggle for showing/hiding a password in a UITextField. Every time I'd toggle secureTextEntry = NO my custom font got borked, and only the last character showed the correct font. Something funky is definitely going on with this, but here's my solution:

-(void)showPassword {     [self.textField resignFirstResponder];     self.textField.secureTextEntry = NO; } 

First responder needs to be resigned for some reason. You don't seem to need to resign the first responder when setting secureTextEntry to YES, only when setting to NO.