How to Set the Tab Order in iOS

How do you set the tab order in iOS?

I'm interested in solving the same problem, although so far the default order, which appears to be left to right, then top to bottom, is the one I want.

I tested the hypothesis that the cursor moves in depth-first order through the tree of subviews and superview, but that is not true. Changing the order of subviews without changing their location didn't change the order of fields traversed by tab presses.

One possibly useful feature is that the text field delegate's textFieldShouldBeginEditing method appears to be called for every text field in the application's window. If that returns NO, then the text field won't be chosen, so if you can define your desired order and make only the right one return YES, that might solve your problem.

Trying to set the tab order in Xcode for OS X App

I checked your project, excellent that you included it. It made playing around with AppKit easier. I am by no means an expert on AppKit, I frankly have not touched it in years but with some effort I managed to make it work.

Looks like the issues you are seeing are because of (automatic) recalculation of Key View Loop. I had to disable it with a hack, there must be a better way, but I could not find one.

class MyWindow: NSWindow {
    override func recalculateKeyViewLoop() {
        // Remove. nextKeyView and makeFirstResponder seemed broken with this
    }
}

After getting rid of the recalculation you can set the initial responder as:

override func viewWillAppear() {
    view.window?.makeFirstResponder(aField)
}

Tabbing now works if you have set all nextKeyViews properly in the Interface Builder.

The setup can also be done programmatically as:

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

    aField.nextKeyView = bField
    bField.nextKeyView = cField
    cField.nextKeyView = dField
    dField.nextKeyView = aField
}

In code above, identifiers aField, bField etc. are outlets in the ViewController. You can add one by control dragging from the field to the view controller and naming it.

Not a perfect solution but I hope this helps.

Tab Order in interface builder?

The Cocoa term you're looking for is "key view loop". Use the initialFirstResponder and nextKeyView outlets to connect the views together in the order you'd like to tab through them.

This is mentioned in the documentation here.

Note that the items which can receive keyboard focus will change depending on the Full Keyboard Access setting (in System Preferences > Keyboard); if disabled, tabbing will skip over various items in your key view loop.

How do you fix reversed tab order in SwiftUI for MacOS? (key view loop)

Add .focusable() to the views and they will tab top-to-bottom.

var body: some View {
  VStack {
    TextField("First name", text: $firstName)
      .modifier(InputModifier())
      .focusable()
    TextField("Last name", text: $lastName)
      .modifier(InputModifier())
      .focusable()
    })
  }
}

Interface Builder Tab Order Typing

I don't think there is a way through IB, but you can do this way in code. You're not actually tabbing, you'd be using the return key.

Put this in your UITextField's delegate:

- (BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range replacementText:(NSString *)text {
  BOOL shouldChangeText = YES;

  if ([text isEqualToString:@"\n"]) {
    // Find the next entry field
    BOOL isLastField = YES;
    for (UIView *view in [self entryFields]) {
      if (view.tag == (textView.tag + 1)) {
        [view becomeFirstResponder];
        isLastField = NO;
        break;
      }
    }
    if (isLastField) {
      [textView resignFirstResponder];
    }

    shouldChangeText = NO;
  }

  return shouldChangeText;
} 

Found here: http://iphoneincubator.com/blog/tag/uitextfield

Rearranging Tab Bar Controller Order in StoryBoard

In 4.5 save the storyboard after adding a Controller, switch to another file and then back to the Storyboard and the tab dragging should work again.

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