How to set text font as System Thin in Swift?

Question

I want to set label text as System Thin. Read in StackOverflow and found an answer like this:

labelDescriptionView.font = UIFont(name: "System-Thin", size: 15.0)

but it did not work. How can I improve my code and make Thin font style programmatically?

Solution 1

The system font in the Interface Builder is the OS default font, it is not a font you can get by it's name. For the system font Apple provides the following methods:

+ (UIFont *)systemFontOfSize:(CGFloat)fontSize;
+ (UIFont *)boldSystemFontOfSize:(CGFloat)fontSize;
+ (UIFont *)italicSystemFontOfSize:(CGFloat)fontSize;

These do not include any thin version but iOS 8.2 onwards you can use:

+ (UIFont *)systemFontOfSize:(CGFloat)fontSize weight:(CGFloat)weight;

Where you can pass: as weights:

UIFontWeightUltraLight
UIFontWeightThin
UIFontWeightLight
UIFontWeightRegular
UIFontWeightMedium
UIFontWeightSemibold
UIFontWeightBold
UIFontWeightHeavy

So a thin system font would be:

UIFont *thinFont = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:15 weight:UIFontWeightThin];

Solution 2

If you're using iOS 8.2 or higher you can use this;

label.font = UIFont.systemFontOfSize(15, weight: UIFontWeightThin)

For previous versions just use HelveticaNeue-Thin as your font.

Edit: for iOS 14 it is:

label.font = UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 14, weight: .light)

Comments

[Martin R]

Where did you find that?

[Orkhan Alizade]

@MartinR stackoverflow.com/questions/22091367/… here

[Orkhan Alizade]

@MartinR oh, I misunderstood the answer =/

[Dipen Panchasara]

@OrkhanAlizade its already given, set font name "HelveticaNeue-Thin" as iOS uses "HelveticaNeue" as default font. There is no font specified "System-Thin" in iOS only Bold, Italic & Regular are there for System font.

[Orkhan Alizade]

@DipenPanchasara but I can set it to Thin from the File Inspecter

[rckoenes]

@DipenPanchasara as of iOS 9 HelveticaNeue is no longer the default font!

[Dipen Panchasara]

@rckoenes i know its removed in iOS 9 but prior to that its available. Though you can check font availability by iOS version here @OrkhanAlizade to set thin font there is no specific method like boldSystemFontOfSize in iOS, though you can set it explicitly using [UIFont fontWithName:@""] method.

[Orkhan Alizade]

I want Thin font, guys =/

[Dipen Panchasara]

@OrkhanAlizade set it programatically.

[Orkhan Alizade]

@DipenPanchasara my question sounds exactly so. How to set it programmatically?

[Martin R]

@OrkhanAlizade: Did you even try a Google search for "ios system thin font"? It took me less than one minute to find the solution.