Can I change the color of auto detected links on UITextView?
I had a UITextView that detects phone numbers and links, but this overrides my fontColor and change it to blueColor. Is there a way to format the color of auto detected links, or should I try a manual version of this function?
Solution 1:
On iOS 7 you can set the tintColor of the UITextView. It affects the link color as well as the cursor line and the selected text color.
iOS 7 also added a new property to UITextView called linkTextAttributes which would appear to let you fully control the link style.
Solution 2:
You can use UIAppearance protocol to apply changes for all text views:
Swift 4.x:
UITextView.appearance().linkTextAttributes = [ .foregroundColor: UIColor.red ]
Swift 3.x:
UITextView.appearance().linkTextAttributes = [ NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.red ]
Swift 2.x:
UITextView.appearance().linkTextAttributes = [ NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.redColor() ]
Objective-C:
[UITextView appearance].linkTextAttributes = @{ NSForegroundColorAttributeName : UIColor.redColor };
Appearance for UITextView is not documented, but works well.
Keep in mind UIAppearance notes:
iOS applies appearance changes when a view enters a window, it doesn’t change the appearance of a view that’s already in a window. To change the appearance of a view that’s currently in a window, remove the view from the view hierarchy and then put it back.
In other words:
Calling this code in init(), or init(coder:) methods will change UI Object appearance, but calling in loadView(), or viewDidLoad() of viewController won't.
If you want to set appearance for whole application, application(_:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:) is good place for calling such code.
Solution 3:
Instead of using an UITextView, I used an UIWebView and enabled the "auto-detect links". To change the link color, just created a regular CSS for the tag.
I used something like this:
NSString * htmlString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"<html><head><script> document.ontouchmove = function(event) { if (document.body.scrollHeight == document.body.clientHeight) event.preventDefault(); } </script><style type='text/css'>* { margin:0; padding:0; } p { color:black; font-family:Helvetica; font-size:14px; } a { color:#63B604; text-decoration:none; }</style></head><body><p>%@</p></body></html>", [update objectForKey:@"text"]];
webText.delegate = self;
[webText loadHTMLString:htmlString baseURL:nil];