Changing Placeholder Text Color with Swift

Question

I have a design that implements a dark blue UITextField, as the placeholder text is by default a dark grey colour I can barely make out what the place holder te

Answer 1

Swift 3 (probably 2), you can override didSet on placeholder in UITextField subclass to apply attribute on it, this way:

override var placeholder: String? {

    didSet {
        guard let tmpText = placeholder else {
            self.attributedPlaceholder = NSAttributedString(string: "")
            return
        }

        let textRange = NSMakeRange(0, tmpText.characters.count)
        let attributedText = NSMutableAttributedString(string: tmpText)
        attributedText.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName , value:UIColor(white:147.0/255.0, alpha:1.0), range: textRange)

        self.attributedPlaceholder = attributedText
    }
}

Answer 2

For Objective C:

UIColor *color = [UIColor colorWithRed:0.44 green:0.44 blue:0.44 alpha:1.0];
 emailTextField.attributedPlaceholder = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"Friend's Email" attributes:@{NSForegroundColorAttributeName: color}];

For Swift:

emailTextField.attributedPlaceholder = NSAttributedString(string: "Friend's Email",
                             attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor: UIColor.white])

Answer 3

Use this for adding an attributed placeholder:

let attributes : [String : Any]  = [ NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.lightGray,
                                     NSFontAttributeName : UIFont(name: "Helvetica Neue Light Italic", size: 12.0)!
                                   ]
x_textfield.attributedPlaceholder = NSAttributedString(string: "Placeholder Text", attributes:attributes)

Answer 4

For Swift 4

txtField1.attributedPlaceholder = NSAttributedString(string: "-", attributes: [NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor: UIColor.white])

Answer 5

I'm surprised to see how many poor solutions there are here.

Here is a version that will always work.

Swift 4.2

extension UITextField{
    @IBInspectable var placeholderColor: UIColor {
        get {
            return self.attributedPlaceholder?.attribute(.foregroundColor, at: 0, effectiveRange: nil) as? UIColor ?? .lightText
        }
        set {
            self.attributedPlaceholder = NSAttributedString(string: self.placeholder ?? "", attributes: [.foregroundColor: newValue])
        }
    }
}

TIP: If you change the placeholder text after setting the color- the color will reset.

Answer 6

For Swift 4.0, X-code 9.1 version or iOS 11 you can use following syntax to have different placeholder color

textField.attributedPlaceholder = NSAttributedString(string: "Placeholder Text", attributes: [NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor : UIColor.white])