Text inset for UITextField?

Overriding -textRectForBounds: will only change the inset of the placeholder text. To change the inset of the editable text, you need to also override -editingRectForBounds:

// placeholder position
- (CGRect)textRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
     return CGRectInset(bounds, 10, 10);
}

// text position
- (CGRect)editingRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
     return CGRectInset(bounds, 10, 10);
}

Using textRectForBounds: is the correct approach. I have wrapped this up in my subclass so you can simply use textEdgeInsets. See SSTextField.

A good approach to add padding to UITextField is to subclass UITextField and add an edgeInsets property. You then set the edgeInsets and the UITextField will be drawn accordingly. This will also function correctly with a custom leftView or rightView set.

OSTextField.h

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface OSTextField : UITextField

@property (nonatomic, assign) UIEdgeInsets edgeInsets;

@end

OSTextField.m

#import "OSTextField.h"

@implementation OSTextField

- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame{
    self = [super initWithFrame:frame];
    if (self) {
        self.edgeInsets = UIEdgeInsetsMake(0, 0, 0, 0);
    }
    return self;
}

-(id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder{
    self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder];
    if(self){
        self.edgeInsets = UIEdgeInsetsMake(0, 0, 0, 0);
    }
    return self;
}

- (CGRect)textRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
    return [super textRectForBounds:UIEdgeInsetsInsetRect(bounds, self.edgeInsets)];
}

- (CGRect)editingRectForBounds:(CGRect)bounds {
    return [super editingRectForBounds:UIEdgeInsetsInsetRect(bounds, self.edgeInsets)];
}

@end

You can adjust the positioning of the text within a text field by making it a subclass of UITextField and overriding the -textRectForBounds: method.