How to read text from a TextField

Paul Hudson @twostraws December 1st 2022

Updated for Xcode 14.2

SwiftUI’s TextField view is similar to UITextField in UIKit, although it looks a little different by default and relies very heavily on binding to state.

To create one, you should pass in a placeholder to use inside the text field, plus the state value it should bind to. For example, this creates a TextField bound to a local string, then places a text view below it that shows the text field’s output as you type:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var name: String = "Tim"

    var body: some View {
        VStack(alignment: .leading) {
            TextField("Enter your name", text: $name)
            Text("Hello, \(name)!")
        }
    }
}

Download this as an Xcode project

When that’s run, you should be able to type into the text field and see a greeting appear directly below.

There are two important provisos when working with text fields. First, they don’t have a border by default, so you probably won’t see anything – you’ll need to tap inside roughly where it is in order to activate the keyboard.

Second, you might find you can’t type into the canvas preview of your layout. If you hit that problem, press Cmd+R to build and run your code in the simulator.

How to read text from a TextField

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