Swift - UIButton with two lines of text

Question

I was wondering if it is possible to create a UIButton with two lines of text. I need each line to have a different font size. The first line will be 17 point and the seco

Answer 1

The suggested solutions unfortunately did not work out for me when I wanted to have a mutliline button inside a CollectionView. Then a colleague showed me a workaround which I wanted to share in case someone has the same problem - hope this helps! Create a class which inherits from UIControl and extend it with a label, which will then behave similar like a button.

class MultilineButton: UIControl {

    let label: UILabel = {
        $0.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        $0.numberOfLines = 0
        $0.textAlignment = .center
        return $0
    }(UILabel())

    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame: frame)

        addSubview(label)

        NSLayoutConstraint.activate([
            label.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: layoutMarginsGuide.leadingAnchor),
            label.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: layoutMarginsGuide.trailingAnchor),
            label.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: layoutMarginsGuide.topAnchor),
            label.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: layoutMarginsGuide.bottomAnchor)
        ])
    }

    override var isHighlighted: Bool {
        didSet {
            backgroundColor = backgroundColor?.withAlphaComponent(isHighlighted ? 0.7 : 1.0)
            label.textColor = label.textColor.withAlphaComponent(isHighlighted ? 0.7 : 1.0)
        }
    }

    required init?(coder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }
}

Answer 2

There are two questions.

I was wondering if it is possible to create a UIButton with two lines of text

This is possible through using the storyboard or programmatically.

Storyboard:

Change the 'Line Break Mode' to Character Wrap or Word Wrap and use Alt/Option + Enter key to enter a new line in the UIButton's Title field.

Programmatically:

override func viewDidAppear(animated: Bool) {
        super.viewDidAppear(animated)

        btnTwoLine?.titleLabel?.lineBreakMode = NSLineBreakMode.ByWordWrapping;
}

I need each line to have a different font size 1

The worst case is, you can use a custom UIButton class and add two labels within it.

The better way is, make use of NSMutableAttributedString. Note that,this can be achieved through only programmatically.

Swift 5:

@IBOutlet weak var btnTwoLine: UIButton?

override func viewDidAppear(animated: Bool) {
    super.viewDidAppear(animated)

    //applying the line break mode
    textResponseButton?.titleLabel?.lineBreakMode = NSLineBreakMode.byWordWrapping;
    let buttonText: NSString = "hello\nthere"

    //getting the range to separate the button title strings
    let newlineRange: NSRange = buttonText.range(of: "\n")

    //getting both substrings
    var substring1 = ""
    var substring2 = ""

    if(newlineRange.location != NSNotFound) {
        substring1 = buttonText.substring(to: newlineRange.location)
        substring2 = buttonText.substring(from: newlineRange.location)
    }

    //assigning diffrent fonts to both substrings
    let font1: UIFont = UIFont(name: "Arial", size: 17.0)!
    let attributes1 = [NSMutableAttributedString.Key.font: font1]
    let attrString1 = NSMutableAttributedString(string: substring1, attributes: attributes1)

    let font2: UIFont = UIFont(name: "Arial", size: 11.0)!
    let attributes2 = [NSMutableAttributedString.Key.font: font2]
    let attrString2 = NSMutableAttributedString(string: substring2, attributes: attributes2)

    //appending both attributed strings
    attrString1.append(attrString2)

    //assigning the resultant attributed strings to the button
    textResponseButton?.setAttributedTitle(attrString1, for: [])
}

Older Swift

@IBOutlet weak var btnTwoLine: UIButton?

override func viewDidAppear(animated: Bool) {
        super.viewDidAppear(animated)

        //applying the line break mode
        btnTwoLine?.titleLabel?.lineBreakMode = NSLineBreakMode.ByWordWrapping;

        var buttonText: NSString = "hello\nthere"

        //getting the range to separate the button title strings
        var newlineRange: NSRange = buttonText.rangeOfString("\n")

        //getting both substrings
        var substring1: NSString = ""
        var substring2: NSString = ""

        if(newlineRange.location != NSNotFound) {
            substring1 = buttonText.substringToIndex(newlineRange.location)
            substring2 = buttonText.substringFromIndex(newlineRange.location)
        }

        //assigning diffrent fonts to both substrings
        let font:UIFont? = UIFont(name: "Arial", size: 17.0)
        let attrString = NSMutableAttributedString(
            string: substring1 as String,
            attributes: NSDictionary(
                object: font!,
                forKey: NSFontAttributeName) as [NSObject : AnyObject])

        let font1:UIFont? = UIFont(name: "Arial", size: 11.0)
        let attrString1 = NSMutableAttributedString(
            string: substring2 as String,
            attributes: NSDictionary(
                object: font1!,
                forKey: NSFontAttributeName) as [NSObject : AnyObject])

        //appending both attributed strings
        attrString.appendAttributedString(attrString1)

        //assigning the resultant attributed strings to the button
        btnTwoLine?.setAttributedTitle(attrString, forState: UIControlState.Normal)

    }

Output

Answer 3

I have notice an issue in most of the solutions which is while making line break mode to "Character Wrap" the second line will be left aligned to the first line

To make all the lines centered. just change the title From Plain to Attributed and then you can make each line centered

Answer 4

SWIFT 3 Syntax

let str = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "First line\nSecond Line")
str.addAttribute(NSFontAttributeName, value: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 17), range: NSMakeRange(0, 10))
str.addAttribute(NSFontAttributeName, value: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 12), range: NSMakeRange(11, 11))
button.setAttributedTitle(str, for: .normal)

Answer 5

You need to do some of this in code. you can't set 2 different fonts in IB. In addition to changing the line break mode to character wrap, you need something like this to set the title,

override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        var str = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "First line\nSecond Line")
        str.addAttribute(NSFontAttributeName, value: UIFont.systemFontOfSize(17), range: NSMakeRange(0, 10))
        str.addAttribute(NSFontAttributeName, value: UIFont.systemFontOfSize(12), range: NSMakeRange(11, 11))
        button.setAttributedTitle(str, forState: .Normal)

    }

Answer 6

my way:

func setButtonTitle(title: String, subtitle: String, button: UIButton){
        //applying the line break mode
        button.titleLabel?.lineBreakMode = NSLineBreakMode.byWordWrapping;
        let title = NSMutableAttributedString(string: title, attributes: Attributes.biggestLabel)
        let subtitle = NSMutableAttributedString(string: subtitle, attributes: Attributes.label)
        let char = NSMutableAttributedString(string: "\n", attributes: Attributes.biggestLabel)
        title.append(char)
        title.append(subtitle)
        button.setAttributedTitle(title, for: .normal)
    }