UITextView selectAll method not working as expected

Question

I\'m creating an iOS 8 app with Xcode 6.0.1 for my iPhone 5 (which has iOS 8.0.2 on it). I want to make it so that when a user clicks on my UITextView, all the text

Answer 1

This solution works too and does not require subclassing UITextView, just put this function on your delegate:

OBJECTIVE C -

- (BOOL)textViewShouldBeginEditing:(UITextView *)textView {
  dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
    [textView selectAll:nil];
  });
  return YES;
}

SWIFT 3 -

func textViewDidBeginEditing(_ textView: UITextView) {
    DispatchQueue.main.async {
        textView.selectAll(nil)
    }
}

Answer 2

@brentvatne 's solution worked for me. Posting the Swift syntax so people can copy and paste in the future.

func textViewShouldBeginEditing(textView: UITextView) -> Bool {
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue()) {
        textView.selectAll(nil)
    }
    return true
}

Answer 3

The best solution I've found for this issue so far is to create a custom UITextView (i.e. create a new class that extends UITextView) and then implement the selectAll method like this:

- (void)selectAll:(id)sender {
    [super selectAll:sender];
    UITextRange *selectionRange = [self textRangeFromPosition:self.beginningOfDocument toPosition:self.endOfDocument];
    [self performSelector:@selector(setSelectedTextRange:) withObject:selectionRange afterDelay:0.0];
}

Then when you use a text view, set its type to your custom text view type (in your code and in the storyboard). Now you can successfully call the selectAll method whenever you need to. I suppose this should work with UITextField too, but I haven't tried it yet.