Creating Clickable Hyperlinks from a URL, Phone Number or Address

The following tips shows a quick way to create clickable hyperlinks using a UITextView. The trick is to set the dataDetectorTypes property to specify the data type you are after, from there, upon a tap the link will launch the appropriate application, namely Safari, Phone Dialer or Maps.

Clickable URL

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// Create textview, centering horizontally UITextView *textView = [[UITextView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 10, 320, 50)];   // Set font, background and alignment [textView setFont:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:16]]; [textView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor blackColor]]; [textView setTextAlignment:UITextAlignmentCenter];   // Unfortunately the link will show as blue even with this setting // [textView setTextColor:[UIColor greenColor]];   // Edit and scrolling off [textView setEditable:NO]; [textView setScrollEnabled:NO];   // Set data type to specify URL/link [textView setDataDetectorTypes:UIDataDetectorTypeLink];   // Set text as URL [textView setText:@"iOSDeveloperTips.com"];   [self.view addSubview:textView];

Clickable Phone Number

To change up the code to support a clickable phone number, replace lines 16-21 with the following:

// Set data type to phone number
[textView setDataDetectorTypes:UIDataDetectorTypePhoneNumber];
 
// Set text as phone number
[textView setText:@"800-555-1212"];

Clickable Address

With the release of iOS 4.0, you can now create a clickable address. Tapping on the link will launch the Maps application.

// Set data type to address
[textView setDataDetectorTypes:UIDataDetectorTypeAddress];
 
// Set text as phone number
[textView setText:@"1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014"];