在尝试了一些建议的方法后，我写了一个更清晰的实现，并将其发布到Github上。拉请求和问题是欢迎的。

与其他方法相比，这里提出了一些关键的改进:

不会在drawRect:中分配一个UILabel。(请不要这样做。) 不将文本视图的当前文本与所需的占位符进行比较以交换颜色。 当听写处于活动状态时隐藏占位符(如UITextField)。

    - (void)textViewDidChange:(UITextView *)textView
{
    placeholderLabel.hidden = YES;
}

在textview上放一个标签。

我建议使用pod 'UITextView+Placeholder'

pod 'UITextView+Placeholder'

在代码中

#import "UITextView+Placeholder.h"

////    

UITextView *textView = [[UITextView alloc] init];
textView.placeholder = @"How are you?";
textView.placeholderColor = [UIColor lightGrayColor];

抱歉添加了另一个答案，但我只是拉出了这样的东西，这创建了最接近uitextfield的占位符。

希望这能帮助到一些人。

-(void)textViewDidChange:(UITextView *)textView{
    if(textView.textColor == [UIColor lightGrayColor]){
        textView.textColor  = [UIColor blackColor]; // look at the comment section in this answer
        textView.text       = [textView.text substringToIndex: 0];// look at the comment section in this answer
    }else if(textView.text.length == 0){
        textView.text       = @"This is some placeholder text.";
        textView.textColor  = [UIColor lightGrayColor];
        textView.selectedRange = NSMakeRange(0, 0);
    }
}

-(void)textViewDidChangeSelection:(UITextView *)textView{
    if(textView.textColor == [UIColor lightGrayColor] && (textView.selectedRange.location != 0 || textView.selectedRange.length != 0)){
        textView.selectedRange = NSMakeRange(0, 0);
    }
}

在代码行中使用它的简单方法:

取一个标签到。nib中的UITextView 将这个标签连接到你的代码， 在它。

- (BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range replacementText:(NSString *)text{

    if (range.location>0 || text.length!=0) {
        placeholderLabel1.hidden = YES;
    }else{
        placeholderLabel1.hidden = NO;
    }
    return YES;
}

下面是“SAMTextView”ObjC代码的Swift端口，作为对这个问题的第一批回答之一。我在iOS 8上进行了测试。我调整了一些东西，包括占位符文本的位置的边界偏移，因为原来的位置太高，太右了(在那个帖子的一个评论中使用了建议)。

我知道有很多简单的解决方案，但我喜欢子类化UITextView的方法，因为它是可重用的，而且我不必在使用它的机制时使类变得混乱。

斯威夫特2.2:

import UIKit

class PlaceholderTextView: UITextView {

    @IBInspectable var placeholderColor: UIColor = UIColor.lightGrayColor()
    @IBInspectable var placeholderText: String = ""

    override var font: UIFont? {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    override var contentInset: UIEdgeInsets {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    override var textAlignment: NSTextAlignment {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    override var text: String? {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    override var attributedText: NSAttributedString? {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        setUp()
    }

    override init(frame: CGRect, textContainer: NSTextContainer?) {
        super.init(frame: frame, textContainer: textContainer)
    }

    private func setUp() {
        NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self, selector: #selector(PlaceholderTextView.textChanged(_:)),
                                                         name: UITextViewTextDidChangeNotification, object: self)
    }

    func textChanged(notification: NSNotification) {
        setNeedsDisplay()
    }

    func placeholderRectForBounds(bounds: CGRect) -> CGRect {
        var x = contentInset.left + 4.0
        var y = contentInset.top  + 9.0
        let w = frame.size.width - contentInset.left - contentInset.right - 16.0
        let h = frame.size.height - contentInset.top - contentInset.bottom - 16.0

        if let style = self.typingAttributes[NSParagraphStyleAttributeName] as? NSParagraphStyle {
            x += style.headIndent
            y += style.firstLineHeadIndent
        }
        return CGRect(x: x, y: y, width: w, height: h)
    }

    override func drawRect(rect: CGRect) {
        if text!.isEmpty && !placeholderText.isEmpty {
            let paragraphStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
            paragraphStyle.alignment = textAlignment
            let attributes: [ String: AnyObject ] = [
                NSFontAttributeName : font!,
                NSForegroundColorAttributeName : placeholderColor,
                NSParagraphStyleAttributeName  : paragraphStyle]

            placeholderText.drawInRect(placeholderRectForBounds(bounds), withAttributes: attributes)
        }
        super.drawRect(rect)
    }
}

斯威夫特4.2:

import UIKit

class PlaceholderTextView: UITextView {

    @IBInspectable var placeholderColor: UIColor = UIColor.lightGray
    @IBInspectable var placeholderText: String = ""

    override var font: UIFont? {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    override var contentInset: UIEdgeInsets {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    override var textAlignment: NSTextAlignment {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    override var text: String? {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    override var attributedText: NSAttributedString? {
        didSet {
            setNeedsDisplay()
        }
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        setUp()
    }

    override init(frame: CGRect, textContainer: NSTextContainer?) {
        super.init(frame: frame, textContainer: textContainer)
    }

    private func setUp() {
        NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self,
         selector: #selector(self.textChanged(notification:)),
         name: Notification.Name("UITextViewTextDidChangeNotification"),
         object: nil)
    }

    @objc func textChanged(notification: NSNotification) {
        setNeedsDisplay()
    }

    func placeholderRectForBounds(bounds: CGRect) -> CGRect {
        var x = contentInset.left + 4.0
        var y = contentInset.top  + 9.0
        let w = frame.size.width - contentInset.left - contentInset.right - 16.0
        let h = frame.size.height - contentInset.top - contentInset.bottom - 16.0

        if let style = self.typingAttributes[NSAttributedString.Key.paragraphStyle] as? NSParagraphStyle {
            x += style.headIndent
            y += style.firstLineHeadIndent
        }
        return CGRect(x: x, y: y, width: w, height: h)
    }

    override func draw(_ rect: CGRect) {
        if text!.isEmpty && !placeholderText.isEmpty {
            let paragraphStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
            paragraphStyle.alignment = textAlignment
            let attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key: Any] = [
            NSAttributedString.Key(rawValue: NSAttributedString.Key.font.rawValue) : font!,
            NSAttributedString.Key(rawValue: NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor.rawValue) : placeholderColor,
            NSAttributedString.Key(rawValue: NSAttributedString.Key.paragraphStyle.rawValue)  : paragraphStyle]

            placeholderText.draw(in: placeholderRectForBounds(bounds: bounds), withAttributes: attributes)
        }
        super.draw(rect)
    }
}