Any way to prevent select all upon focusing a TextField?

Is there any way to prevent TextField from selecting all content upon focus? Ideally - for my case - it would be possible to configure the caret so that it would be placed directly to where the user clicks upon focusing.

I realize this is not always desired, but I would like to have a way to configure this behaviour (like TextField.singleClickSelectsAll (which would default to true like it does now) but could be made false to disable this behavior. Or preferably even more specific configuration when wanted.

There was a workaround for IMGUI where someone found out that Unity does not select all when caret color is transparent. The workaround made the caret transparent upon focus and then restored it. However, it's not currently possible to change caret color (at least not yet in preview 13). Here's the original idea: https://stackoverflow.com/questions...mmediate-gui-from-selecting-all-text-on-click

Any ideas welcomed!

 

If this is not possible, I'd like to submit this as a feature request. Desired behavior would be that I could click on a TextField and cursor would be immediately positioned where I click, without selecting all text (like currently). This should be behind a boolean setting so current behavior would be preserved.

 

Or is there some other place to submit feedback/improvement requests?

To have a boolean like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. TextField.selectAllUponFocus = false

would be perfect. It should remove the behavior that all TextField content is selected when I focus the element. Instead, when this would be false, caret would be directly moved to the position where I clicked without any selection. Currently first click selects all.

 

It's one year later, is there an easy way to do this now?

 

Is there at least a workaround for this?
For example, one could intercept a SelectEvent to revert it's effect.
Sadly, there does not seem to be any SelectEvent.

I found "textField.doubleClickSelectsWord" and "textField.tripleClickSelectsLine".
It feels like mismanagement that is there this stuff, which is relevant only for advanced TextField users,
while there is nothing like "textField.selectAllOnFocus", which would affect every TextField user and every TextField.

Furthermore, we could implement a "SelectAll on focus" by using the FocusEvent. But we cannot undo the SelectAll as it is now.
Thus, I argue that no SelectAll on focus should be default in Unity.

 

I'm using 2022.2 and selectAllOnFocus seems to do nothing at all. I've tried setting it to false in the UXML, in the start() function of the owning script, and in the function in which the textfield gains focus and every time I focus the textfield, everything is selected anyway just as it is without setting this bool. What am I missing?

 

So, does this need to be on a subcomponent? Or just the root textfield? Because this is what I have and nonetheless, when it gains focus (by code), it selects all:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. m_ChatInput = m_Root.Q<TextField>("ChatInput");
3. m_ChatInput.selectAllOnFocus = false;
4. m_ChatInput.selectAllOnMouseUp = false;
5.  

Does this selectAllOnFocus = false not apply to the textfield gaining focus via textField.Focus() because that's how I'm trying to do this and what I'm having issues with.

FWIW, this is the code used to add text to the textfield then give it focus which is ignoring the selectAllOnFocus bit and, well, selecting all the new text:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. m_ChatInput.value = "test";
3. m_ChatInput.Focus();
4. m_ChatInput.cursorIndex += m_ChatInput.value.Length;
5.  

 

Amazing, thank you so much. I appreciate your help - it works as advertised!

 

It sucks that this feature wont be backported to at least 2021, the amount of times I lost work due to accidentally starting to type before I click the second time...

 

please backport it to 2021 LTS