Customize text color of UIDatePicker for iOS7 (just like Mailbox does)

I need similar for my app and have ended up going the long way round. It's a real shame there isn't an easier way to simply switch to a white text version of UIDatePicker.

The code below uses a category on UILabel to force the label's text colour to be white when the setTextColor: message is sent to the label. In order to not do this for every label in the app I've filtered it to only apply if it's a subview of a UIDatePicker class. Finally, some of the labels have their colours set before they are added to their superviews. To catch these the code overrides the willMoveToSuperview: method.

It would likely be better to split the below into more than one category but I've added it all here for ease of posting.

#import "UILabel+WhiteUIDatePickerLabels.h"#import <objc/runtime.h>@implementation UILabel (WhiteUIDatePickerLabels)+ (void)load {    static dispatch_once_t onceToken;    dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{        [self swizzleInstanceSelector:@selector(setTextColor:)                      withNewSelector:@selector(swizzledSetTextColor:)];        [self swizzleInstanceSelector:@selector(willMoveToSuperview::)                      withNewSelector:@selector(swizzledWillMoveToSuperview:)];    });}// Forces the text colour of the lable to be white only for UIDatePicker and its components-(void) swizzledSetTextColor:(UIColor *)textColor {    if([self view:self hasSuperviewOfClass:[UIDatePicker class]] ||       [self view:self hasSuperviewOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UIDatePickerWeekMonthDayView")] ||       [self view:self hasSuperviewOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UIDatePickerContentView")]){        [self swizzledSetTextColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];    } else {        //Carry on with the default        [self swizzledSetTextColor:textColor];    }}// Some of the UILabels haven't been added to a superview yet so listen for when they do.- (void) swizzledWillMoveToSuperview:(UIView *)newSuperview {    [self swizzledSetTextColor:self.textColor];    [self swizzledWillMoveToSuperview:newSuperview];}// -- helpers --- (BOOL) view:(UIView *) view hasSuperviewOfClass:(Class) class {    if(view.superview){        if ([view.superview isKindOfClass:class]){            return true;        }        return [self view:view.superview hasSuperviewOfClass:class];    }    return false;}+ (void) swizzleInstanceSelector:(SEL)originalSelector                 withNewSelector:(SEL)newSelector{    Method originalMethod = class_getInstanceMethod(self, originalSelector);    Method newMethod = class_getInstanceMethod(self, newSelector);    BOOL methodAdded = class_addMethod([self class],                                       originalSelector,                                       method_getImplementation(newMethod),                                       method_getTypeEncoding(newMethod));    if (methodAdded) {        class_replaceMethod([self class],                            newSelector,                            method_getImplementation(originalMethod),                            method_getTypeEncoding(originalMethod));    } else {        method_exchangeImplementations(originalMethod, newMethod);    }}@end

Here's a good working snippet. Tested on iOS 7.1, 8.0 and 8.1.

#if __IPHONE_OS_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED > __IPHONE_8_1    #error "Check if this hack works on this OS"#endif    [self.datePicker setValue:[UIColor whiteColor] forKeyPath:@"textColor"];    SEL selector = NSSelectorFromString(@"setHighlightsToday:");    NSInvocation *invocation = [NSInvocation invocationWithMethodSignature:[UIDatePicker instanceMethodSignatureForSelector:selector]];    BOOL no = NO;    [invocation setSelector:selector];    [invocation setArgument:&no atIndex:2];    [invocation invokeWithTarget:self.datePicker];

I've added a simple condition to break the compilation process if you're building for iOS > 8.1, because I can't be sure that this hack will work, and you don't want to have any crashes in production because of this.

The setHighlightsToday: selector is used because UIDatePicker is using [UIColor blackColor] by default to display the current date.

I found the trick that set font color to any color and also dont mess up with Today label.

datePicker.setValue(UIColor.whiteColor(), forKeyPath: "textColor")datePicker.datePickerMode = .CountDownTimerdatePicker.datePickerMode = .DateAndTime //or whatever your original mode was

Here is the result:

And all the credits for this solution goes to this post in other thread:https://stackoverflow.com/a/33459744/1236334