Set padding for UITextField with UITextBorderStyleNone

Solution 1:

I found a neat little hack to set the left padding for this exact situation.

Basically, you set the leftView property of the UITextField to be an empty view of the size of the padding you want:

UIView *paddingView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 5, 20)];
textField.leftView = paddingView;
textField.leftViewMode = UITextFieldViewModeAlways;

Worked like a charm for me!

In Swift 3/ Swift 4, it can be done by doing that

let paddingView: UIView = UIView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 5, height: 20))
textField.leftView = paddingView
textField.leftViewMode = .always

Solution 2:

I created this category implementation and added it to the top of the .m file.

@implementation UITextField (custom)
    - (CGRect)textRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
        return CGRectMake(bounds.origin.x + 10, bounds.origin.y + 8,
                          bounds.size.width - 20, bounds.size.height - 16);
    }
    - (CGRect)editingRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
        return [self textRectForBounds:bounds];
    }
@end

Based off the link Piotr Blasiak provided. It seemed simpler then creating a whole new subclass, and also simpler then adding the additional UIView. Still, it seems like something is missing to not be able to control the padding inside a text field.

Swift 4 solution:

class CustomTextField: UITextField {
    struct Constants {
        static let sidePadding: CGFloat = 10
        static let topPadding: CGFloat = 8
    }

    override func textRect(forBounds bounds: CGRect) -> CGRect {
        return CGRect(
            x: bounds.origin.x + Constants.sidePadding,
            y: bounds.origin.y + Constants.topPadding,
            width: bounds.size.width - Constants.sidePadding * 2,
            height: bounds.size.height - Constants.topPadding * 2
        )
    }

    override func editingRect(forBounds bounds: CGRect) -> CGRect {
        return self.textRect(forBounds: bounds)
    }
}

Solution 3:

A Swift 3 version for Xcode >6, where you can edit the inset value in Interface Builder / Storyboard.

import UIKit

@IBDesignable
class FormTextField: UITextField {

    @IBInspectable var inset: CGFloat = 0

    override func textRect(forBounds bounds: CGRect) -> CGRect {
        return bounds.insetBy(dx: inset, dy: inset)
    }

    override func editingRect(forBounds bounds: CGRect) -> CGRect {
        return textRect(forBounds: bounds)
    }

}

Solution 4:

Edit: Still works in iOS 11.3.1

In iOS 6 myTextField.leftView = paddingView; is causing issue

This solves the problem

myTextField.layer.sublayerTransform = CATransform3DMakeTranslation(5, 0, 0)

For right aligned text field use CATransform3DMakeTranslation(-5, 0, 0) as mention by latenitecoder in comments