Twitter has announced a new open-source text editor API for iOS developers.
The tool offers a rich text editor for iOS apps, based on the tweet and Fleet composer API for the Twitter app. Twitter developers said they understand how difficult it can be to create a text editor in iOS apps, and so has made its own API available to everyone to use for free.
Speaking of the new API, a spokesperson for Twitter said: “The high-level APIs don’t always offer enough power or control to create a truly great in-app experience. Meanwhile, the lower level APIs require a lot of knowledge about how text editing works in a variety of languages, including support for bidirectional scripts, alternative input methods (like those used for East Asian languages), and assistive technology like braille keyboards.”
“Twitter Text Editor encapsulates UITextView and provides familiar delegate-based APIs like many common UIKit APIs. It extends LayoutManager and TextStorage to provide custom text attributes, including attributes for presenting custom emoji. Twitter Text Editor has event schedulers to process events, providing consistent delegate callback order to your code.”
Are you a developer? Take advantage of the free API on GitHub. You’ll need Xcode 11 or later to use it, and the Text Editor API only works on devices that run iOS 11 or later.