ios6 uilabel not center text aligned

Question

I'm working on a ios app minimum ios 5 and i have just hit a weird issue with uilabels. or maybe im missing something obvious. anyway the problem im having is that i have a uilabel which is to be centered text aligned. all works fine on ios 5 but on ios 6 it is always is left aligned. I seen that the old way of doing uilabel text align has deprecated and that setting it as so should work.

self.topComment.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;

But no even this way it still only is center aligned on ios 5 and left aligned on ios 6. I do have some code that resizes the font of the text in the label to try make it fit with a min and max size.

UIFont *font = self.topComment.font;

for(int i = maxFont; i > minFont; i--)
{
    // Set the new font size.
    font = [font fontWithSize:i];
    CGSize constraintSize = CGSizeMake(self.topComment.frame.size.width, 1000);
    CGSize labelSize = [topString sizeWithFont:font constrainedToSize:constraintSize lineBreakMode:UILineBreakModeWordWrap];
    if(labelSize.height <= self.topComment.frame.size.height ) {
        fits = YES;
        break;
    }
    //self.topComment.text = topString;

}


self.topComment.font = font;
self.topComment.text = topString;

So that is the only thing i am doing to the label but it always is left aligned in ios 6. Important to note that if i drop in a uilabel with text and center align it and dont use the above code then it is centered on both ios 5 and 6.

uitextalignmentcenter is deprecated for ios6 if i understand their docs correctly. but i just tried it anyway for the craic but same issue — glogic, Oct 17 '12 at 10:58
Is you text left aligned or is the frame of the label just fitting the text? — Eiko, Oct 17 '12 at 11:06
the uilabel itself is textaligned. tried centering the text align option in the nib file and setting it in code too — glogic, Oct 17 '12 at 11:11
have you tried resetting the text alignment after you set the font? maybe iOS 6 is resetting the layout when you set the font — deleted_user, Oct 17 '12 at 11:32

score 37 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 28 '14 at 08:41

37

Ok looks like turning on Tighten Letter Spacing has a different result on ios 5 and 6. I honestly cant explain why the difference but just turning this off gives the desired centering of labels for me. Just leaving this here as an answer in case anyone else makes the same silly mistake.

For example:

    lbl.adjustsLetterSpacingToFitWidth = NO;

Note this is deprecated in iOS 7.0.

edited Jun 28 '14 at 08:41

Gabriel Jensen

4,082
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answered Oct 17 '12 at 12:09

glogic

4,042
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7

Confirmed on iOS6: NSTextAlignmentCenter does not work if tighten letter spacing is enabled. – Felix Lamouroux Oct 26 '12 at 19:13
Oh man! Thanks so much! I have been breaking my head over this for past few days! Didn't think that 'tighten' has this kind of adverse side effect! – Jean Sep 09 '13 at 15:36
In iOS6.1 seems to work only for Text Plain. When Attributed is on, alignment has no effect. – Javide Sep 20 '13 at 12:06
1

NSTextAlignment*ANYTHING* does not seem to work on iOS6 if tighten ketter spacing is on. Thanks for the answer! Helped me out (up voted). – chadbag Oct 21 '13 at 17:30
I think that the sizeToFit method also stops text aligning to the centre as well – rharvey Nov 28 '13 at 15:37
Thank you so much! You've just saved my mind from blowing up! – tonytony Nov 28 '13 at 19:38
1

Thanks! U saved my day! By the way, in iOS 7 everything works fine, too. This is only iOS 6 issue. – Dennis Pashkov Dec 03 '13 at 11:44
Gah, I should have seen this! But thank you for pointing it out! – Matt Mc Dec 20 '13 at 19:40

score -2 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 13 '13 at 06:10

-2

For iOS 6 or later:

label.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentLeft;

edited Feb 13 '13 at 06:10

TheTiger

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answered Dec 15 '12 at 12:45

Manoj Yadav

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4

This is how to set it to the left. This is the opposite of the OP's request. – tooluser Oct 18 '13 at 18:16

ios6 uilabel not center text aligned

2 Answers2

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