UITextField with secure entry, always getting cleared before editing

Question

I am having a weird issue in which my UITextField which holds a secure entry is always getting cleared when I try to edit it. I added 3 characters to the field, goes to another field and comes back, the cursor is in 4th character position, but when I try to add another character, the whole text in the field gets cleared by the new character. I have 'Clears when editing begins' unchecked in the nib. So what would be the issue? If I remove the secure entry property, everything is working fine, so, is this the property of Secure entry textfields? Is there any way to prevent this behaviour?

Answer 1

Set,

textField.clearsOnBeginEditing = NO;

Note: This won't work if secureTextEntry = YES. It seems, by default, iOS clears the text of secure entry text fields before editing, no matter clearsOnBeginEditing is YES or NO.

Answer 2

If you don't want the field to clear, even when secureTextEntry = YES, use:

- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string {

    NSString *updatedString = [textField.text stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:range withString:string];

    textField.text = updatedString;

    return NO;
}

I encountered a similar issue when adding show/hide password text functionality to a sign-up view.