Is there any way to completely remove the focus border of a wxTextCtrl object on OSX?

Question

I am building a project in OSX (Yosemite) with wxWidgets 3.0.2.

I can remove a blue border around the wxTextCtrl window by using wxBORDER_NONE. But when I put it in a sizer, it has a 3 pixel grey border that I just can't get rid of. What's the point of having 2 borders, one of which cannot be removed? Surely people want to customise more than that?

Is there any possible way to remove it? I don't really want to hack at the wx source, but I will if I have to.

Or is there another way of controlling layout without using sizers, than might cause the border not to appear?

Update: It seems to be the focus highlight border. I don't want it.

Is there any way of disabling the border around the focused UI object? It's so frustrating because it is such a minor thing, but my program is useless if can't remove it.

" is there another way of controlling layout without using sizers" You do not HAVE to use sizers. You can specify the position of each widget expliciily. Its tough sledding, but no harder than in frameworks that do not have sizers — ravenspoint, Sep 01 '15 at 19:45
Can you post the code where you create the wxTextCtrl and add it to the sizer? — tinman, Sep 01 '15 at 22:04
Thanks for the input, but I have updated the question somewhat. It is not the fault of the sizers, it's just that sizers show the problem. I tried using absolute positioning and it is the same. The problem is purely the focus border. It is grey, about 3px wide and it ruins everything. I need to disable it, or draw over it somehow. — DaleyPaley, Sep 03 '15 at 05:46
@DaleyPaley I'm having the same problem with the wxTextCtrl's focus border.. did you ever find a solution? — Gino Mempin, Jul 11 '17 at 06:18

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 12 '17 at 01:08

In case someone else stumbles into this post, this answer is for the updated question:

Update: It seems to be the focus highlight border. I don't want it.

Is there any way of disabling the border around the focused UI object?

Using wxWidgets APIs, NO, there is no way to remove it, since it's a behavior of the native NSTextField class. I was only able to remove it by editing the wx source itself to set the focusRingType property of the underlying NSTextField object to NSFocusRingTypeNone:

File: core/textctrl.mm
Func: wxWidgetImpl::CreateTextControl

NSTextField* v = nil;
if ( style & wxTE_PASSWORD )
    v = [[wxNSSecureTextField alloc] initWithFrame:r];
else
    v = [[wxNSTextField alloc] initWithFrame:r];

...

// remove glow/border when textfield gets focused 
[v setFocusRingType:NSFocusRingTypeNone];

I've also set BORDER_NONE on my wxTextCtrl.

Of course, this sort of changes the standard OS X look-and-feel, so maybe that's why this wasn't exposed as a wxTextCtrl API? Or it breaks something else? But so far it's working OK on my end. Plus, my app needs to have its own custom theme that doesn't go well with the glow border.

I'm using wxWidgets 3.1.0 (cloned from their repo) and OS X 10.12.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 08 '21 at 17:48

This worked for me -on Windows-:

First --> bind the EVT_SET_FOCUS to a styling method.

Second --> reset the fg and bg colours to your original design.

Python code:

button_1.Bind(wx.EVT_SET_FOCUS, focus_without_border)
def focus_without_border(evt=None):
    element = evt.GetEventObject()
    element.SetForegroundColour( wx.Colour( 241, 241, 241 ) )
    element.SetBackgroundColour( wx.Colour( 40, 41, 42 ) )

Is there any way to completely remove the focus border of a wxTextCtrl object on OSX?

2 Answers2