Remove clear button (grey x) to the right of UISearchBar when cancel button tapped

Right, to begin my question, here's some 开发者_开发百科screenies of the problem already solved by the Spotify app:

Spotify's Step 1: Standard UISearchBar not in editing mode.

Spotify's Step 2: UISearchBar now in editing mode. Search term entered. Cancel button slides in from the right, and the clear button (grey x) appears.

Spotify's Step 3: Cancel button pressed; keyboard slides out and the search bar is no longer in editing mode. Search term remains and the grey x button is now hidden.

At present, the following code fires off when my cancel button is pressed:

- (void)searchBarCancelButtonClicked:(UISearchBar *)searchBar {
    [searchBar resignFirstResponder];
    [searchBar setShowsCancelButton:NO animated:YES];
}

Which results in:

My Step 3: Search bar now not in editing mode. Cancel button and keyboard has slid out. Search term remains but so does the grey x.

So, my question is this: given that -resignFirstResponder (and -endEditing:, FYI) does not hide the grey x button when a search bar has had text entered into it, how does one hide it?

Thanks again, friends.

---

The problem is that UISearchBar doesn't expose it's text field, and manages the properties on the text field itself. Sometimes, the values of the properties aren't what you want.

For instance, in my own app, I wanted the keyboard style for my search bar to use the transparent alert style.

My solution was to walk through the subviews of the search bar until you find the text field. You should then be able to set the clearButtonMode property, using something like UITextFieldViewModeWhileEditing as a parameter.

This should make it so that the clear button is only shown while the text field is editing.

You want to do this on viewDidLoad or something early, so it's set before you start using it (but after the search bar is initialised.

for (UIView *subview in searchBar.subviews)
{
    if ([subview conformsToProtocol:@protocol(UITextInputTraits)])
    {
        [(UITextField *)subview setClearButtonMode:UITextFieldViewModeWhileEditing];
    }
}

---

Looks like iOS 7 changed the view hierarchy of UISearchBar, and the text box is deeper in the view (The above solution didn't work for me). However, modifying the above solution to traverse the whole hierarchy works:

[self configureSearchBarView:[self searchBar]];

- (void)configureSearchBarView:(UIView*)view {
    for (UIView *subview in [view subviews]){
        [self configureSearchBarView:subview];
    }
    if ([view conformsToProtocol:@protocol(UITextInputTraits)]) {
        [(UITextField *)view setClearButtonMode:UITextFieldViewModeWhileEditing];
    }
}

---

I'm building upon the previous answers because I started seeing crashes on iOS 7.1 unless I made the following change. I added an additional call to respondsToSelector for each view to make sure that setClearButtonMode: can be called. I observed an instance of UISearchBar getting passed in, which seems to conform to the UITextInputTraits protocol yet does not have the setClearButtonMode: selector, so a crash occurred. An instance of UISearchBarTextField also gets passed in and is the actual object for which to call setClearButtonMode:.

- (void)removeClearButtonFromView:(UIView *)view
{
    if (!view)
    {
        return;
    }

    for (UIView *subview in view.subviews)
    {
        [self removeClearButtonFromView:subview];
    }

    if ([view conformsToProtocol:@protocol(UITextInputTraits)])
    {
        UITextField *textView = (UITextField *)view;
        if ([textView respondsToSelector:@selector(setClearButtonMode:)])
        {
            [textView setClearButtonMode:UITextFieldViewModeNever];
        }
    }
}

---

You need to get the textField of the Search Bar

UITextField *textField = [searchBar valueForKey:@"_searchField"];
textField.clearButtonMode = UITextFieldViewModeNever;

use in - (void)searchBarTextDidBeginEditing:(UISearchBar *)searchBar method.

- (void)searchBarTextDidBeginEditing:(UISearchBar *)searchBar
 {

UITextField *textField = [searchBar valueForKey:@"_searchField"];
textField.clearButtonMode = UITextFieldViewModeNever;


 }

---

A better way to do this in iOS7 is:

[[UITextField appearanceWhenContainedIn:[UISearchBar class], nil] setClearButtonMode:UITextFieldViewModeWhileEditing];

---

To expand on Jadariens answer if you never want the grey x to appear you need to use the following

for (UIView *subview in searchBar.subviews)
{
    if ([subview conformsToProtocol:@protocol(UITextInputTraits)])
    {
        [(UITextField *)subview setClearButtonMode:UITextFieldViewModeNever];
    }
}

---

Accepted answer does not work on iOS7+, here is the modified version as a Swift extension

extension UIView {
    class func removeClearButton(svs: [UIView]) {
        for sv in svs {
            if let tv = sv as? UITextField where sv.conformsToProtocol(UITextInputTraits) {
                tv.clearButtonMode = .Never
                return
            } else {
                UIView.removeClearButton(sv.subviews)
            }
        }
    }
}

Usage

UIView.removeClearButton(searchBar.subviews)

---

Hers is a category I wrote that does this

Category

@implementation UISearchBar (Additions)

- (void)setClearButtonMode:(UITextFieldViewMode)viewMode {
    UITextField *textField = [self findTextFieldInView:self];
    [textField setClearButtonMode:viewMode];
}

- (UITextField *)findTextFieldInView:(UIView *)view {

    for (UIView *subview in view.subviews) {

        if ([subview isKindOfClass:[UITextField class]] ||
            [subview.class isSubclassOfClass:[UITextField class]]) {

            return (UITextField *)subview;
        }

        UITextField *textField = [self findTextFieldInView:subview];

        if (textField) {
            return textField;
        }
    }

    return nil;
}

@end

Usage

[searchBar setClearButtonMode:UITextFieldViewModeWhileEditing];

---

There's a better way than any of the answers here, and you don't have to use private APIs or traverse subviews to do it.

UISearchBar has a built-in API for doing this:

[UISearchBar setImage:forSearchBarIcon:state]

The SearchBar icon key you want is UISearchBarIconClear, and you want the UIControlStateNormal state. Then give it a clear image for the image, and you're done.

So, it should look like this:

[searchBar setImage:clearImage forSearchBarIcon:UISearchBarIconClear state:UIControlStateNormal];

---

For the (x) icon in searchBar. You can use below delegate method.

- (void)searchBarTextDidBeginEditing:(UISearchBar *)searchBar
{
    searchBar.showsCancelButton = YES;
}

---

for (UIView *subview in _search_bar.subviews)
{
    NSLog(@"%@",subview.subviews);

    for (UIView *subview11 in subview.subviews)
    {
        if ([subview11 conformsToProtocol:@protocol(UITextInputTraits)])
        {
            [(UITextField *)subview11 setClearButtonMode:UITextFieldViewModeNever];
        }
    }

}