How can I change the width of a JComboBox dropdown list?

Question

I have an editable JComboBox which contains a list of single letter values. Because of that the combobox is very small.

Every letter has a special mean

Answer 1

I believe the only way to do this with the public API is to write a custom UI (there are two bugs dealing with this).

If you just want something quick-and-dirty, I found this way to use implementation details to do it (here):

public void popupMenuWillBecomeVisible(PopupMenuEvent e) {
    JComboBox box = (JComboBox) e.getSource();
    Object comp = box.getUI().getAccessibleChild(box, 0);
    if (!(comp instanceof JPopupMenu)) return;
    JComponent scrollPane = (JComponent) ((JPopupMenu) comp).getComponent(0);
    Dimension size = new Dimension();
    size.width = box.getPreferredSize().width;
    size.height = scrollPane.getPreferredSize().height;
    scrollPane.setPreferredSize(size);
    //  following line for Tiger
    // scrollPane.setMaximumSize(size);
}

Put this in a PopupMenuListener and it might work for you.

Or you could use the code from the first linked bug:

class StyledComboBoxUI extends BasicComboBoxUI {
  protected ComboPopup createPopup() {
    BasicComboPopup popup = new BasicComboPopup(comboBox) {
      @Override
      protected Rectangle computePopupBounds(int px,int py,int pw,int ph) {
        return super.computePopupBounds(
            px,py,Math.max(comboBox.getPreferredSize().width,pw),ph
        );
      }
    };
    popup.getAccessibleContext().setAccessibleParent(comboBox);
    return popup;
  }
}

class StyledComboBox extends JComboBox {
  public StyledComboBox() {
    setUI(new StyledComboBoxUI());
  }
}