Change PasswordBox PlaceHolder Text Foreground color

Question

I have a PasswordBox

<PasswordBox 
    MaxLength="12" 
    PlaceholderText="Password" 
    Foreground="Black" 
    Background="#eeeeee"/>

And I want to change the PlaceholderForeground color like I would on a regular TextBox but there is no property like that and after searching through the internet I found no solution that A worked for me B I understood, all the xaml code was too lengthy with style and resources of 50 lines all for such a simple property change I don't know why WPF has to be so overly complicated for no reason

Can anybody sugguest a solution that is possibly not 50 lines of xaml code that simply changes the foreground color of the placeholder text in the PasswordBox.

Answer 1

You can't change the placeholder color without creating something custom. But there are workarounds without huge snippets of XAML markup.

The easiest way that came to my mind is creating a custom control that derives from PasswordBox. You'll only have to override OnRender:

1. Call base.OnRender

2. Check that there's no text in the password box, and it isn't focused

3. Create a FormattedText object, maybe like this:

var placeholder = new FormattedText(
  PlaceholderText,
  CultureInfo.CurrentCulture,
  FlowDirection.LeftToRight,
  new Typeface(FontFamily, FontStyle, FontWeight, FontStretch),
  FontSize,
  new SolidColorBrush(Color.Blue),  // Or whatever you want
  VisualTreeHelper.GetDpi(this).PixelsPerDip);

4. Draw it at the top-left corner of the content:

drawingContext.DrawText(placeholder, new Point(Padding.Left, Padding.Top));

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If you don't want any extra code, the only way I know is using third-party libraries, e.g. MahApps.Metro.

You can also create a custom behavior for the built-in PasswordBox, though it's not much simpler than a custom control.