How to hide the keyboard assistant bar - ios

Question

I'm working on an iPad app, and I am unable to hide the UIKeyboardAssistantBar, the bar shown above the soft keyboard, with text prediction etc. See picture below, which shows the full keyboard, just to give a reference - the bar I want to hide is above the keyboard (the one displaying "2")
The problem I have is when an external keyboard is used: the soft keyboard is not shown when a text view obtains the focus, but that assistant bar is always shown instead - the only way I've found so far is to let the user manually hide it, using the icon at the far right.
Ideally, the solution I'm looking for is a global call that enables or disables that, so that I don't have to handle that individually for each text view.
Any idea?

Answer 1

There is a trick that you can try. Here is the code:
let item = self.yourTextView.inputAssistantItem;
item.leadingBarButtonGroups = [];
item.trailingBarButtonGroups = [];

Answer 2

The accepted solution will hide the leading and trailing BarButtonGroups on the keyboard, however unfortunately it will not hide the suggestion/auto correct bar (the center buttons with the suggested "2".
My need was for an iPad native app that required an HTML login page using a WKWebView to render the HTML login page. To hide the suggestion buttons, I used some injected javascript because I had no control over the HTML login page. Swift 3 code below creates the WKWebView (replaces the view object and injects the userScript into the page):
var webView: WKWebView!
override func loadView() {
let autocorrectJavaScript = "var inputTextElement = document.getElementById('userName');"
+ " if (inputTextElement != null) {"
+ " var autocorrectAttribute = document.createAttribute('autocorrect');"
+ " autocorrectAttribute.value = 'off';"
+ " inputTextElement.setAttributeNode(autocorrectAttribute);"
+ " }"
let userScript = WKUserScript(source: autocorrectJavaScript, injectionTime: .atDocumentEnd, forMainFrameOnly: false)
let webConfiguration = WKWebViewConfiguration()
webConfiguration.userContentController.addUserScript(userScript)
webView = WKWebView(frame: .zero, configuration: webConfiguration)
view = webView
}

Answer 3

Actually, here is a method that works, even with contenteditable enabled:
func findKeyboardAssistantView() -> UIView? {
let result: UIView? = nil
let windows = UIApplication.shared.windows
let prefixes = [
"<UIInputSetContainerView",
"<UIInputSetHostView",
"<_UIKBCompatInputView",
"<UIKeyboardAutomatic",
"<UIKeyboardImpl",
]
for window in windows {
if window.description.hasPrefix("<UIRemoteKeyboardWindow") {
var last = window.subviews
for p in prefixes {
for s in last {
if s.description.hasPrefix(p) {
last = s.subviews
}
}
}
for s in last {
if s.description.hasPrefix("<UIKeyboardAssistantBar") {
return s
}
}
break
}
}
return result
}
findKeyboardAssistantView()?.isHidden = true
Note that it has to be fired when UIResponder.keyboardWillShowNotification is sent