UITextView - setting font not working with iOS 6 on XCode 5

Question

I'm using storyboards for my UI. I was previously using XCode 4.6 and released on iOS 6. I have since updated to iOS 7 using XCode 5 and updated the Storyboard to work nicely with XCode 5. I have one issue though:

UITextView doesn't want to display font changes within code. Text colour changes work fine. Any other property changes are fine. Font, not at all. I was using a custom font, so I checked different fonts with different sizes (i.e. systemFontOfSize:) but that didn't work. The text view only shows the font that's set in the Storyboard. What could I be missing here? Are there any auto-layout constraints that mess with this sort of thing? I had a few issues with constraints during the migration, but as I said, the fonts work fine in iOS 7.

I guess it's something in the Storyboard that I'm missing, as if I create a UIViewController and add a text view in code, it works fine.

I'd put up some code, but I'm not sure it'd help at all in this case.

Solution 1

The issue was caused by the editable property being false in the Storyboard. I have absolutely no idea why this caused the font to remain unchanged - and only on iOS 6.

Solution 2

Even stranger, this only happens on iPhone, not iPad.

If you're setting the font in code and don't want an editable text view, do this:

textView.editable = YES;
textView.font = newFont;
textView.editable = NO;

Solution 3

In my case, it is matter of 'selectable' property of UITextView.

So I checked 'selectable' property of UITextView in Storyboard Editor to set it YES

and later in viewWillAppear set this property to NO.

textview.text = @"some text";
textview.selectable = NO;

Solution 4

For me it's work if you set the text of your UITextView and after set the font (same for color) :

_myTextView.text = @"text";
[_myTextView setFont:[UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica Neue" size:18.0f]];
_myTextView.textColor = [UIColor whiteColor];

Solution 5

Thank you for all the answers guys. Issue is still present on iOS9. What i've found out, is that when you set "User Interaction Enabled = false" in the Interface Builder you can leave Editable and Selectable = true and user will not be able to edit a text view.

So, my solution is:

1. Set User Interaction Enabled = False in IB
2. Set Editable = True in IB
3. Set Selectable = True in IB
4. Configure your text view in whatever way you want.

View more solutions

Comments

[ToddB]

This didn't work for me, but setting the font after setting the text did. Go figure. Thanks Apple!

[Tom Kincaid]

This was actually my problem too. Makes no sense.

[palaniraja]

this is not specific to iphone, the fix works for ipad air running ios 7.0.6

[jab]

Weird. The project where I discovered this, it affected iOS 6 iPhone but not iOS 6 iPad or iOS 7 anything. But it's good to verify that it's a general-purpose fix.

[Amrendra Pratap Singh]

I am having the same problem for UILabel. Have you any idea how to overcome this ?

[jab]

I didn't see this for labels. I'd suspect you don't have your IBOutlet connected correctly. Is your label nil?

[Dannie P]

filed bug to apple radar #16781060 for this

[Cameron E]

checking "Selectable" or "editable" worked for me too. This is definitely a bug on Apple's end.

[Steve O'Connor]

Same here - set text to white in Storyboard - nothing happens stays "default" until I set "selectable" - why?

[rharvey]

Works for textColor as well

[Kent Robin]

This also applies to the text color in my case.

[Admin]

Worked for me as well. Although in talking with a co-worker we're thinking that this might be because it's causing the UITextView to re-draw.

[Kirti Nikam]

Thanks, this trick works for me...I am using Xcode 6.2 and iOS 8.2.

[tounaobun]

Sadly still required in iOS9.

[dragonflyesque]

It's crazy that we have to experiment with random cocktails of code to get the most basic things like this working. This the only one that worked for me.

[Jordan Montel]

@dragonflyesque yes... It was for iOS 6. Do you test on iOS 9 and same result ?

[dragonflyesque]

This helped me fix my issue for iOS 8.

[NSPratik]

I stuck in this issue many times and everytime, I came to this answer :D, Thanks a lot @jab

[marco]

Problem and solution still apply in iOS 9 (Xcode 7.3)

[Murat Yasar]

Shame on you Apple! Just stolen my hours!