UITextView support for Placeholder text

PlaceholderTextView.swift

import UIKit
import Foundation

@IBDesignable class PlaceholderTextView: UITextView, UITextViewDelegate
{
    private let _placeholderColor: UIColor = UIColor(white: 0.78, alpha: 1)
    private var _placeholderLabel: UILabel!
    
    @IBInspectable var placeholder: String = "" {
        didSet {
            _placeholderLabel.text = placeholder
        }
    }
    
    override var text: String! {
        didSet {
            textViewDidChange(self)
        }
    }
    
    override init() {
        super.init()
        configurePlaceholderLabel()
    }
    
    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame: frame)
    }
    
    override init(frame: CGRect, textContainer: NSTextContainer?) {
        super.init(frame: frame, textContainer: textContainer)
        configurePlaceholderLabel()
    }
    
    required init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        configurePlaceholderLabel()
    }
    
    func configurePlaceholderLabel() {
        self.delegate = self
        
        _placeholderLabel = UILabel()
        _placeholderLabel.font = font
        _placeholderLabel.textColor = _placeholderColor
        _placeholderLabel.text = placeholder
        _placeholderLabel.numberOfLines = 0
        _placeholderLabel.setTranslatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints(false)
        
        self.addSubview(_placeholderLabel)
        
        var constraints = NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("H:|-(\(self.frame.origin.x))-[placeholder]-(\(0))-|", options: nil, metrics: nil, views: ["placeholder": _placeholderLabel])
        constraints += NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("V:|-(\(self.textContainerInset.top))-[placeholder]-(>=\(self.textContainerInset.bottom))-|", options: nil, metrics: nil, views: ["placeholder": _placeholderLabel])
        self.addConstraints(constraints)
    }
    
    func textViewDidChange(textView: UITextView) {
        _placeholderLabel.hidden = !textView.text.isEmpty
    }
}

Usage.md

Usage

Interface builder

1. Add a UITextView control onto the nib or storyboard UIViewController
2. In the Identity Inspectorpane , select the class PlaceholderTextView
3. In the Attributes Inspector pane, there should be a "Placeholder" text field, which will let you set the placeholder text.

Note: There is an existing bug in interface builder which will cause this control to crash the preview engine. If this bothers you, remove @IBDesignable and @IBInspectable attributes, then set the placeholder property from code

Code Example

var textView = PlaceholderTextView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 300, height: 44))
textView.placeholder = "Username"
self.view.addSubview(textView)

This is awesome. Thanks for sharing!

I would also add
self.sendSubviewToBack(_placeholderLabel)
This means that the carat doesn't appear below the placeholder when you first tap on the textview.

I will use this, thanks for sharing 👍