Backspace functionality in iOS 6 & iOS 5 for UITextfield with 'secure' attribute

Question

I have a UITextfield for entering password with SECURE attribute enabled.

When the user taps outside the UITextfield after inputting a certain number of characters, and then taps back again to the UITextfield for editing, the following behavior is taking place:

iOS 5.1 -When I try to delete a character(using backspace from keyboard) from the UITextfield, the last character is deleted.

iOS 6.0 -When I try to delete a character from the UITextfield, all typed characters are getting deleted.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug in iOS 6?

Answer 1

This is the intended behaviour under iOS6 and you shouldn't probably change it.

If for whatever reason you really need this, you can override UITextField's delegate method textField:shouldChangeCharactersInRange:replacementString: and restore the old behaviour:

#import "ViewController.h"

@interface ViewController () <UITextFieldDelegate>
@end

@implementation ViewController

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    self.passwordField.delegate = self;
}

- (BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string
{
    if (range.location > 0 && range.length == 1 && string.length == 0)
    {
        // iOS is trying to delete the entire string
        textField.text = [textField.text substringToIndex:textField.text.length - 1];
        return NO;
    }
    return YES;
}

@end