Use multiple font colors in a single label

Question

Is there a way to use two, or even three font colors in a single label in iOS?

If the text "hello, how are you" were used as an example, the "hello," would be blue, and the "how are you" would be green?

Is this possible, it seems easier than creating multiple labels?

Solution 1

Reference from here.

First of all initialize of you NSString and NSMutableAttributedString as below.

var myString:NSString = "I AM KIRIT MODI"
var myMutableString = NSMutableAttributedString()

In ViewDidLoad

override func viewDidLoad() {

    myMutableString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: myString, attributes: [NSFontAttributeName:UIFont(name: "Georgia", size: 18.0)!])
    myMutableString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: UIColor.redColor(), range: NSRange(location:2,length:4))
    // set label Attribute
    labName.attributedText = myMutableString
    super.viewDidLoad()
}

OUTPUT

MULTIPLE COLOR

Add the line code below in your ViewDidLoad to get multiple colors in a string.

 myMutableString.addAttribute(NSForegroundColorAttributeName, value: UIColor.greenColor(), range: NSRange(location:10,length:5))

Multiple color OUTPUT

Swift 4

var myMutableString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: str, attributes: [NSAttributedStringKey.font :UIFont(name: "Georgia", size: 18.0)!])
myMutableString.addAttribute(NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor, value: UIColor.red, range: NSRange(location:2,length:4))

Swift 5.0

 var myMutableString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: str, attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key.font :UIFont(name: "Georgia", size: 18.0)!])
 myMutableString.addAttribute(NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor, value: UIColor.red, range: NSRange(location:2,length:4))

Solution 2

For @Hems Moradiya

let attrs1 = [NSFontAttributeName : UIFont.boldSystemFontOfSize(18), NSForegroundColorAttributeName : UIColor.greenColor()]

let attrs2 = [NSFontAttributeName : UIFont.boldSystemFontOfSize(18), NSForegroundColorAttributeName : UIColor.whiteColor()]

let attributedString1 = NSMutableAttributedString(string:"Drive", attributes:attrs1)

let attributedString2 = NSMutableAttributedString(string:"safe", attributes:attrs2)

attributedString1.appendAttributedString(attributedString2)
self.lblText.attributedText = attributedString1

Swift 4

    let attrs1 = [NSAttributedStringKey.font : UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 18), NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor : UIColor.green]

    let attrs2 = [NSAttributedStringKey.font : UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 18), NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor : UIColor.white]

    let attributedString1 = NSMutableAttributedString(string:"Drive", attributes:attrs1)

    let attributedString2 = NSMutableAttributedString(string:"safe", attributes:attrs2)

    attributedString1.append(attributedString2)
    self.lblText.attributedText = attributedString1

Swift 5

    let attrs1 = [NSAttributedString.Key.font : UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 18), NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor : UIColor.green]

    let attrs2 = [NSAttributedString.Key.font : UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 18), NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor : UIColor.white]

    let attributedString1 = NSMutableAttributedString(string:"Drive", attributes:attrs1)

    let attributedString2 = NSMutableAttributedString(string:"safe", attributes:attrs2)

    attributedString1.append(attributedString2)
    self.lblText.attributedText = attributedString1

Solution 3

Swift 4

By using following extension function, you can directly set a color attribute to an attributed string and apply the same on your label.

extension NSMutableAttributedString {

    func setColorForText(textForAttribute: String, withColor color: UIColor) {
        let range: NSRange = self.mutableString.range(of: textForAttribute, options: .caseInsensitive)

        // Swift 4.2 and above
        self.addAttribute(NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor, value: color, range: range)

        // Swift 4.1 and below
        self.addAttribute(NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor, value: color, range: range)
    }

}

Try above extension, using a label:

let label = UILabel()
label.frame = CGRect(x: 60, y: 100, width: 260, height: 50)
let stringValue = "stackoverflow"

let attributedString: NSMutableAttributedString = NSMutableAttributedString(string: stringValue)
attributedString.setColorForText(textForAttribute: "stack", withColor: UIColor.black)
attributedString.setColorForText(textForAttribute: "over", withColor: UIColor.orange)
attributedString.setColorForText(textForAttribute: "flow", withColor: UIColor.red)
label.font = UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 40)

label.attributedText = attributedString
self.view.addSubview(label)

Result:

Solution 4

Here a solution for Swift 5

let label = UILabel()
let text = NSMutableAttributedString()
text.append(NSAttributedString(string: "stack", attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor: UIColor.white]));
text.append(NSAttributedString(string: "overflow", attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor: UIColor.gray]))
label.attributedText = text

Solution 5

Updated Answer for Swift 4

You can easily use html inside attributedText property of the UILabel to easily do various text formatting.

 let htmlString = "<font color=\"red\">This is  </font> <font color=\"blue\"> some text!</font>"

    let encodedData = htmlString.data(using: String.Encoding.utf8)!
    let attributedOptions = [NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute: NSHTMLTextDocumentType]
    do {
        let attributedString = try NSAttributedString(data: encodedData, options: attributedOptions, documentAttributes: nil)
        label.attributedText = attributedString

    } catch _ {
        print("Cannot create attributed String")
    }

Updated Answer for Swift 2

let htmlString = "<font color=\"red\">This is  </font> <font color=\"blue\"> some text!</font>"

let encodedData = htmlString.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)!
let attributedOptions = [NSDocumentTypeDocumentAttribute: NSHTMLTextDocumentType]
do {
    let attributedString = try NSAttributedString(data: encodedData, options: attributedOptions, documentAttributes: nil)
    label.attributedText = attributedString

} catch _ {
    print("Cannot create attributed String")
}

View more solutions

Comments

[rakeshbs]

Try using attributed text property of the UILabel. stackoverflow.com/questions/3586871/…

[Kirit Modi]

You want to add To range color in string

[Justin Rose]

can you add two range properties, if not, how do I get around that?

[Qian Chen]

I got this error message: Cannot invoke initializer for type 'NSAttributedString' with an argument list of type '(data: NSData, options: [String : String], documentAttributes: _, error: _)'

[rakeshbs]

there are changes in Swift 2. Please check my updated answer.

[Nikhil Manapure]

Thanks for this simple one.

[Omid CompSCI]

@Krunal How can this be modified to support multiple strings to change colors...? I have a long string with underneath headers having ------------, but the code above works fine but it colors only the first found one. Can this be modified to do all --------- strings to a certain color....? Thanks.

[swift2geek]

this will no gonna work for text like this: "flowstackoverflow" it will change the first flow only,but we need the last one, how to achive that?

[Shittel]

Thanks for your answer. In my case, I'm getting a two users' names consecutively from API. I want to color the second name, so I don't know the length of the sentence. Is there any solution for this case? Thank you so much.