# textField(_:textCompletionFor:) Returns the full completion text for a particular item to use when the item is highlighted or selected. ``` @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 The full text to insert, including the matched partial word and its potential completion, or `nil` if no text completion should be used. ## 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. --- Copyright © 2026 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. | [Terms of Use](https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/terms/site.html) | [Privacy Policy](https://www.apple.com/privacy/privacy-policy)