NSRange from Swift Range?

Swift String ranges and NSString ranges are not "compatible". For example, an emoji like 😄 counts as one Swift character, but as two NSString characters (a so-called UTF-16 surrogate pair).

Therefore your suggested solution will produce unexpected results if the string contains such characters. Example:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let textRange = text.startIndex..<text.endIndex
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)

text.enumerateSubstringsInRange(textRange, options: NSStringEnumerationOptions.ByWords, { (substring, substringRange, enclosingRange, stop) -> () in
    let start = distance(text.startIndex, substringRange.startIndex)
    let length = distance(substringRange.startIndex, substringRange.endIndex)
    let range = NSMakeRange(start, length)

    if (substring == "saying") {
        attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: NSColor.redColor(), range: range)
    }
})
println(attributedString)

Output:

😄😄😄Long paragra{
}ph say{
    NSColor = "NSCalibratedRGBColorSpace 1 0 0 1";
}ing!{
}

As you see, "ph say" has been marked with the attribute, not "saying".

Since NS(Mutable)AttributedString ultimately requires an NSString and an NSRange, it is actually better to convert the given string to NSString first. Then the substringRange is an NSRange and you don't have to convert the ranges anymore:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let nsText = text as NSString
let textRange = NSMakeRange(0, nsText.length)
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: nsText)

nsText.enumerateSubstringsInRange(textRange, options: NSStringEnumerationOptions.ByWords, { (substring, substringRange, enclosingRange, stop) -> () in

    if (substring == "saying") {
        attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: NSColor.redColor(), range: substringRange)
    }
})
println(attributedString)

Output:

😄😄😄Long paragraph {
}saying{
    NSColor = "NSCalibratedRGBColorSpace 1 0 0 1";
}!{
}

Update for Swift 2:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let nsText = text as NSString
let textRange = NSMakeRange(0, nsText.length)
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)

nsText.enumerateSubstringsInRange(textRange, options: .ByWords, usingBlock: {
    (substring, substringRange, _, _) in

    if (substring == "saying") {
        attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: NSColor.redColor(), range: substringRange)
    }
})
print(attributedString)

Update for Swift 3:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let nsText = text as NSString
let textRange = NSMakeRange(0, nsText.length)
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)

nsText.enumerateSubstrings(in: textRange, options: .byWords, using: {
    (substring, substringRange, _, _) in

    if (substring == "saying") {
        attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: NSColor.red, range: substringRange)
    }
})
print(attributedString)

Update for Swift 4:

As of Swift 4 (Xcode 9), the Swift standard library provides method to convert between Range<String.Index> and NSRange. Converting to NSString is no longer necessary:

let text = "😄😄😄Long paragraph saying!"
let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: text)

text.enumerateSubstrings(in: text.startIndex..<text.endIndex, options: .byWords) {
    (substring, substringRange, _, _) in
    if substring == "saying" {
        attributedString.addAttribute(.foregroundColor, value: NSColor.red,
                                      range: NSRange(substringRange, in: text))
    }
}
print(attributedString)

Here substringRange is a Range<String.Index>, and that is converted to the corresponding NSRange with

NSRange(substringRange, in: text)

For cases like the one you described, I found this to work. It's relatively short and sweet:

 let attributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "follow the yellow brick road") //can essentially come from a textField.text as well (will need to unwrap though)
 let text = "follow the yellow brick road"
 let str = NSString(string: text) 
 let theRange = str.rangeOfString("yellow")
 attributedString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: UIColor.yellowColor(), range: theRange)