What are the "First Responder" and "Exit" boxes purpose in the storyboard editor?

Madivad picture Madivad · Nov 26, 2012 · Viewed 16.5k times · Source

In the XCode IDE, at the bottom of the view controller in the MainStoryboard editor, are two boxes: First Responder, and Exit.

I know what a firstResponder is programatically within the code, but in the storyboard editor, I can't seem to do anything useful by it.

Am I able to use the first responder in this area to somehow set the first responder of the view? I'd like the first textfield to be active on load and I have tried right+click and dragging to no avail. I know I can set it programatically in the viewDidLoad method, but is there some way of doing it here?

And what is the green Exit for?

First Responder (orange) and Exit (Green) - what are they for?

Answer

Borzh picture Borzh · Oct 25, 2014

There are no good answer for this question, so I am posting my answer:

From here:

Note: You probably won’t be using the First Responder very much. This is a proxy object that refers to whatever object has first responder status at any given time. It was also present in your nibs and you probably never had a need to use it then either. As an example, you can hook up the Touch Up Inside event from a button to First Responder’s cut: selector. If at some point a text field has input focus then you can press that button to make the text field, which is now the first responder, cut its text to the pasteboard.

Edit:

1) First Responder is very useful if you are using text fields with keyboard notifications. I use it to make keyboard disappear, make an outlet to variable currentFirstResponder of your class, and in viewWillDisappear:

[self.currentFirstResponder resignFirstResponder];

2) You can read about unwind segues ("Exit" box) here