How to disable UITextField editing but still accept touch?

I'm making a UITextField that has a UIPickerView as inputView. Its all good, except that I can edit by copy, paste, cut and select text, and I don't want it. Only the Picker should modify text field.

I've learned that I can disable editing by setting setEnabled or setUserInteractionEnabled to NO. Ok, but the TextField stop responding to touching and the picker don't show up.

What can I do to achieve it?

Using the textfield delegate, there's a method

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

Return NO from this, and any attempt by the user to edit the text will be rejected.

That way you can leave the field enabled but still prevent people pasting text into it.

Translate the answer of Nick to swift:

P/S: Return false => the textfields cannot input, edit by the keyboard. It just can set text by code.EX: textField.text = "My String Here"

override func textField(textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersInRange range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
    return false
}

This would be the simplest of all:

in viewDidLoad:(set the delegate only for textfields which should not be editable.

self.textfield.delegate=self;

and insert this delegate function:

- (BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField{
return NO;
}

Thats it!

In swift 3+ :

class MyViewController: UIViewController, UITextFieldDelegate {

   override func viewDidLoad() {
      self.myTextField.delegate     = self
   }

   func textFieldShouldBeginEditing(textField: UITextField) -> Bool {
      if textField == myTextField {
         // code which you want to execute when the user touch myTextField
      }
      return false
   }
}

Simply place a UIButton exactly over the entire UITextField with no Label-text which makes it "invisible". This button can receive and delegate touches instead of the Textfield and the content of the TextField is still visible.

It would be more elegant to create a custom subclass of UITextField that returns NO for all calls to canPerformAction:withSender: (or at least where action is @selector(cut) or @selector(paste)), as described here.

In addition, I'd also implement - (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string as per Nick's suggestion in order to disable inputting text from Bluetooth keyboards.

In Swift:

func textFieldShouldBeginEditing(textField: UITextField) -> Bool {
    questionField.resignFirstResponder();
    // Additional code here
    return false
}

I used the solution provided by MrMage. The only thing I'd add is you should resign the UITextView as first responder, otherwise you're stuck with the text selected.

Here's my swift code:

class TouchableTextView : UITextView {

    override func canPerformAction(action: Selector, withSender sender: AnyObject?) -> Bool {
        self.resignFirstResponder()
        return false
    }
    
    override func shouldChangeTextInRange(range: UITextRange, replacementText text: String) -> Bool {
        self.resignFirstResponder()
        return false
    }
    
}

To prevent editing of UITextField while using UIPickerView for selecting values(in Swift):

self.txtTransDate = self.makeTextField(self.transDate, placeHolder: "Specify Date")
self.txtTransDate?.addTarget(self, action: "txtTransDateEditing:", forControlEvents: UIControlEvents.EditingDidBegin)

func makeTextField(text: String?, placeHolder: String) -> UITextField {
    var textField = UITextField(frame: CGRect(x: 140, y: 0, width: 220.00, height: 40.00));
    textField.placeholder = placeHolder
    textField.text = text
    textField.borderStyle = UITextBorderStyle.Line
    textField.secureTextEntry = false;
    textField.delegate = self
    return textField
}


func txtTransDateEditing(sender: UITextField) {
    var datePickerView:UIDatePicker = UIDatePicker()
    datePickerView.datePickerMode = UIDatePickerMode.Date
    sender.inputView = datePickerView
    datePickerView.addTarget(self, action: Selector("datePickerValueChanged:"), forControlEvents: UIControlEvents.ValueChanged)
}

func datePickerValueChanged(sender: UIDatePicker) {
    var dateformatter = NSDateFormatter()
    dateformatter.dateStyle = NSDateFormatterStyle.MediumStyle
    self.txtTransDate!.text = dateformatter.stringFromDate(sender.date)
}

func textField(textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersInRange range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool  {
    self.resignFirstResponder()
    return false
}

For an alternative that handles the UIPickerView and Action Sheets, checkout ActionSheetPicker

https://github.com/TimCinel/ActionSheetPicker

It's cocoapods enabled. It handles all of the cancel and done buttons on the Action Sheet. The examples within the sample project are great. I choose the ActionSheetStringPicker, which handles easily just String based options, but the API can handle most anything that I can think of.

I originally started a solution much like the checkmarked answer, but stumbled onto this project and took me roughly 20 minutes to get things integrated into my app for usage including using cocopods: ActionSheetPicker (~> 0.0)

Hope this helps.

Download the git project and look at the following classes:

• ActionSheetPickerViewController.m
• ActionSheetPickerCustomPickerDelegate.h

Here is roughly most of the code that I added, plus the *.h imports.

- (IBAction)gymTouched:(id)sender {
      NSLog(@"gym touched");

      [ActionSheetStringPicker showPickerWithTitle:@"Select a Gym" rows:self.locations initialSelection:self.selectedIndex target:self successAction:@selector(gymWasSelected:element:) cancelAction:@selector(actionPickerCancelled:) origin:sender];
 }


- (void)actionPickerCancelled:(id)sender {
    NSLog(@"Delegate has been informed that ActionSheetPicker was cancelled");
}


- (void)gymWasSelected:(NSNumber *)selectedIndex element:(id)element {
    self.selectedIndex = [selectedIndex intValue];

    //may have originated from textField or barButtonItem, use an IBOutlet instead of element
    self.txtGym.text = [self.locations objectAtIndex:self.selectedIndex];
}


-(BOOL)textFieldShouldBeginEditing:(UITextField *)textField {
    return NO;  // Hide both keyboard and blinking cursor.
}

if you are ready to create your custom textfield then you can just use this answer from another stackoverflow question. https://stackoverflow.com/a/42698689/9369035

just override those three method as in above answer and that is enough. at least so far as I tested.

This workaround works. Put a transparent UIView above the text field and implement the following code:

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
 [super viewDidLoad];

   UILongPressGestureRecognizer *press = [[UILongPressGestureRecognizer alloc]             initWithTarget:self action:@selector(longPress)];
[transparentView addGestureRecognizer:press];
 [press release];
  press = nil;
}

-(void)longPress
{
   txtField.userInteractionEnabled = NO;
}

-(void)touchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
   txtField.userInteractionEnabled = YES;
}

-(void)touchesEnded:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
  [txtField becomeFirstResponder];
}

Make your inputView be presented by an hidden textfield which also change the text of the presented and disabled one.

Not completely sure about how hacky this is but the only thing that did the trick in my case was adding a target action and calling endEditing. Since my picker controls my UITextField.text value, I could dismiss the keyboard as soon as the user clicks on the field. Here's some code:

uiTextFieldVariable.addTarget(self, action: #selector(dismissKeyboard), for: .editingDidBegin)

@objc private func dismissKeyboard() {
    endEditing(true)
}

If you are using IQKeyboardManagerSwift pod then use textField.enableMode = .disabled

else If you are using RxSwift & RxCocoa pods then

textField.rx.controlEvent(.editingDidBegin)
    .subscribe(onNext: { 
        [weak self] _ in let _ = self?.textField.endEditing(true)
    }).disposed(by: bag)

else use delegate method of textFiled

 func textFieldShouldBeginEditing(_ textField: UITextField) -> Bool {
     return false
 }

I used :

[self.textField setEnabled:NO];

and its work fine

This worked for me [textview setEditable:NO]; The above answers are overcomplicating the situation.