---
title: Text Display
framework: appkit
role: collectionGroup
role_heading: API Collection
path: appkit/text-display
---

# Text Display

Display text and check spelling.

## Overview

Overview In most cases, you can lay out your app’s text using the NSTextField or NSTextView classes (or their subclasses). Use the NSTextField class to add either a label or a simple text input. Use the NSTextView class to provide more comprehensive layout and editing features for larger bodies of text. For example, NSTextView supports rich text, attachments (graphics, file, and other), input management and key binding, and marked text attributes. NSTextView works with the font panel and menu, rulers and paragraph styles, the Services facility (for example, the spell-checking service), and the pasteboard. NSTextView also allows customizing through delegation and notifications—you rarely need to subclass NSTextView. You rarely create instances of NSTextView programmatically either, because objects on Interface Builder’s palettes, such as NSTextField, NSForm, and NSScrollView, already contain NSTextView objects. For even more powerful and more creative text manipulation (such as displaying text in a circle) see TextKit. Spell-checking The NSSpellServer class lets you define a spell-checking service and provide it as a service to other apps. To connect your app to a spell-checking service, use the NSSpellChecker class. The NSIgnoreMisspelledWords and NSChangeSpelling protocols support the spell-checking mechanism.

## Topics

### Text views

- [NSTextField](appkit/nstextfield.md)
- [NSTextFieldDelegate](appkit/nstextfielddelegate.md)
- [NSTextView](appkit/nstextview.md)
- [NSTextViewDelegate](appkit/nstextviewdelegate.md)
- [NSTextDelegate](appkit/nstextdelegate.md)
- [NSText](appkit/nstext.md)

### Text input

- [Adopting the system text cursor in custom text views](appkit/adopting-the-system-text-cursor-in-custom-text-views.md)
- [NSTextInputContext](appkit/nstextinputcontext.md)
- [NSTextInputClient](appkit/nstextinputclient.md)
- [NSTextAlternatives](appkit/nstextalternatives.md)
- [NSTextContent](appkit/nstextcontent.md)
- [NSTextInsertionIndicator](appkit/nstextinsertionindicator.md)
- [NSTextInsertionIndicator.DisplayMode](appkit/nstextinsertionindicator/displaymode-swift.enum.md)
- [NSTextInsertionIndicator.AutomaticModeOptions](appkit/nstextinsertionindicator/automaticmodeoptions-swift.struct.md)

### Text-checking

- [NSTextCheckingController](appkit/nstextcheckingcontroller.md)
- [NSTextCheckingClient](appkit/nstextcheckingclient.md)
- [NSTextInputTraits](appkit/nstextinputtraits.md)
- [NSTextInputTraitType](appkit/nstextinputtraittype.md)

### Spell-checking

- [NSSpellChecker](appkit/nsspellchecker.md)
- [NSChangeSpelling](appkit/nschangespelling.md)
- [NSIgnoreMisspelledWords](appkit/nsignoremisspelledwords.md)

### Deprecated

- [NSTextInput](appkit/nstextinput.md)

## See Also

### Text

- [TextKit](appkit/textkit.md)
- [Fonts](appkit/fonts.md)
- [Writing Tools](appkit/writing-tools.md)