Programmatically change UITextField Keyboard type
It's worth noting that if you want a currently-focused field to update the keyboard type immediately, there's one extra step:
// textField is set to a UIKeyboardType other than UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress
[textField setKeyboardType:UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress];
[textField reloadInputViews];
Without the call to reloadInputViews
, the keyboard will not change until the selected field (the first responder) loses and regains focus.
A full list of the UIKeyboardType
values can be found here, or:
typedef enum : NSInteger {
UIKeyboardTypeDefault,
UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable,
UIKeyboardTypeNumbersAndPunctuation,
UIKeyboardTypeURL,
UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad,
UIKeyboardTypePhonePad,
UIKeyboardTypeNamePhonePad,
UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress,
UIKeyboardTypeDecimalPad,
UIKeyboardTypeTwitter,
UIKeyboardTypeWebSearch,
UIKeyboardTypeAlphabet = UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable
} UIKeyboardType;
There is a keyboardType
property for a UITextField
:
typedef enum {
UIKeyboardTypeDefault, // Default type for the current input method.
UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable, // Displays a keyboard which can enter ASCII characters, non-ASCII keyboards remain active
UIKeyboardTypeNumbersAndPunctuation, // Numbers and assorted punctuation.
UIKeyboardTypeURL, // A type optimized for URL entry (shows . / .com prominently).
UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad, // A number pad (0-9). Suitable for PIN entry.
UIKeyboardTypePhonePad, // A phone pad (1-9, *, 0, #, with letters under the numbers).
UIKeyboardTypeNamePhonePad, // A type optimized for entering a person's name or phone number.
UIKeyboardTypeEmailAddress, // A type optimized for multiple email address entry (shows space @ . prominently).
UIKeyboardTypeDecimalPad, // A number pad including a decimal point
UIKeyboardTypeTwitter, // Optimized for entering Twitter messages (shows # and @)
UIKeyboardTypeWebSearch, // Optimized for URL and search term entry (shows space and .)
UIKeyboardTypeAlphabet = UIKeyboardTypeASCIICapable, // Deprecated
} UIKeyboardType;
Your code should read
if(user is prompted for numeric input only)
[textField setKeyboardType:UIKeyboardTypeNumberPad];
if(user is prompted for alphanumeric input)
[textField setKeyboardType:UIKeyboardTypeDefault];