---
title: "textField(_:textCompletionFor:)"
framework: appkit
role: symbol
role_heading: Instance Method
path: "appkit/nstextsuggestionsdelegate/textfield(_:textcompletionfor:)"
---

# textField(_:textCompletionFor:)

Returns the full completion text for a particular item to use when the item is highlighted or selected.

## Declaration

```swift
@MainActor func textField(_ textField: NSTextField, textCompletionFor item: Self.Item) -> String?
```

## Parameters

- `textField`: The text field whose suggestions item may be highlighted or selected.
- `item`: The item that may be highlighted or selected.

## Return Value

Return Value The full text to insert, including the matched partial word and its potential completion, or nil if no text completion should be used.

## Discussion

Discussion This function may be used by the control to display a preview of the text that would appear if the highlighted item is selected. Additionally, the default implementation of textField(_:didSelect:) uses this function to inform what changes are made to the control’s text. For example, given a user interface with a text field and suggestions menu that looks like:         ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ Recipe: ┃ apple│                       ┃         ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛         ┌────────────────┐         │ Applesauce     │         │ Apple juice    │         │ Apple pie      │         └────────────────┘ where “│” denotes the text insertion point. If this function returns "Applesauce" for the first suggestion item, when the first suggestion item is highlighted, the user interface will look like:         ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ Recipe: ┃ apple│sauce|                 ┃         ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛         ┌────────────────┐         │|Applesauce    |│         │ Apple juice    │         │ Apple pie      │         └────────────────┘ where the text between “|” is shown as a preview in the field Upon selection of that first suggestion item:         ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ Recipe: ┃ Applesauce                   ┃         ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛ note: This function may or may not be called when an item is highlighted, depending on a variety of factors. Don’t depend upon the timing of when this function is called. Solely use it to return the full completion text for a particular item.