UITextView's UIGestureRecognizer preventing keyboard from appearing on tap

Question

I have a UITextView to which I have attached a gesture recognizer as follows:

let testTapGestureRecognizer = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(textTextViewTapped(gestureRecognizer:)))
testTapGestureRecognizer.cancelsTouchesInView = false
testTapGestureRecognizer.delaysTouchesBegan = false
testTapGestureRecognizer.delaysTouchesEnded = false
if textTextView != nil {
    textTextView!.addGestureRecognizer(testTapGestureRecognizer)
}

The selector mentioned above is as follows:

@objc func textTextViewTapped(gestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) {
    print("testTextViewTapped called.")
}

Every time I tap the UITextView, I can see the message above printed on the console. However, the keyboard doesn't appear any more.

I found Apple's doc confusing here: Here, it says that

A gesture recognizer doesn’t participate in the view’s responder chain.

which I am interpreting as that any gestures are also sent to the view and up the chain, as is normal.

Later on the same page, it says,

If a gesture recognizer recognizes its gesture, the remaining touches for the view are cancelled.

which means that if an attached gesture recognizer is able to understand a gesture as the one it is supposed to recognize, then it will prevent it from being delivered to the view to which it is attached. Further, it specifies 3 properties that should be able to stop the gesture recognizer from doing that. I have set all three of them to false in my code, as shown above.

What is actually happening here and how do I allow the UITextView to interpret the touches normally and also be able to use a gesture recognizer?

Why do you need to add a gesture recognizer to the text view? What are you trying to do? — rmaddy
Completely unrelated but code like if x != nil { x!... } is a bad pattern in Swift. You should do: if let x = x { x... }. — rmaddy
@rmaddy I am trying to clear some place holder text, before the user can start typing. Also, agree on the pattern being bad. Still learning. Thanks for the tip. — euphoria83
Are you trying to replicate the placeholder behavior of UITextField in a UITextView? — rmaddy

André Slotta André Slotta · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-19T22:32:34

You could use the UIGestureRecognizerDelegate to make the UITapGestureRecognizer work along the regular UITextView behaviour:

class TestViewController: UIViewController {

    @IBOutlet weak var textView: UITextView!

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        let tapGestureRecognizer = UITapGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(tap))
        tapGestureRecognizer.delegate = self

        textView.addGestureRecognizer(tapGestureRecognizer)
    }

    @objc private func tap() {
        print("tap")
    }

}

extension TestViewController: UIGestureRecognizerDelegate {

    func gestureRecognizer(_ gestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer, shouldRecognizeSimultaneouslyWith otherGestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) -> Bool {
        return true
    }

}

UITextView's UIGestureRecognizer preventing keyboard from appearing on tap

2 Answers