Can't get UITextField to autoshrink text - iphone

Question

I have a UITextField on a table view cell, and when it's text becomes too long I would like the font size to decrease. I want to make it very clear that I am talking about a UITextField, not a UILabel or a UITextView. The reason I say this is because I have seen this question pop up several times and the answers were all based on UILabel instead of UITextField. For example, someone asked "I can't get my UITextField to autoshrink" and the answer was "make sure it's numberOfLines is set to 1". To the best of my knowledge, a UITextField does not even have that property and is a single line control.
I have tried:
in IB setting the font to system 14.0, minFontSize to 7 and checking the "adjust to fit" box
in code in tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:
ptCell.name.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize: 14.0];
ptCell.name.adjustsFontSizeToFitWidth = YES;
ptCell.name.minimumFontSize = 7.0;
but neither of these have worked. By that I mean that instead of the text shrinking it truncates the tail.
Does anyone know what I am missing? Presumably this should work because I have seen other questions complaining that it is doing that when the user does not want it to.

Answer 1

I had the same problem. The UITextField stoped shrinking the text when it was too long, but instead it resized itself and grew outside its 'bounds'.
The solution that helped me was to set width constraint on given UITextField. After that it did not grew anymore, instead the text inside got smaller as intended.
(Of course you have to set minFontSize and check the "adjust to fit" box in storyboard.)
I know it's kind of a late, but if anyone else will find this question via google as I did...it might just help.

Answer 2

I used the answer posted by #Purva as a starting point to come up with this method that gives the required font size starting at the configured font size, and not to drop below the configured minimum font size. Whereas #Purva tested for the height of the text I required the width to fit. This method can be put in either a category or a subclass of UITextField. I have it in a subclass which also captures the UITextFieldTextDidChangeNotification. From this notification handler I call the new method and resize the font if required. I also call it when I am assigning new text to the textfield to make sure it will fit by subclassing - (void)setText: (NSString*)text.
In each case, when I call it I am using the following code:
CGFloat requiredFontSize = self.requiredFontSize;
if( self.font.pointSize != requiredFontSize )
{
self.font = [self.font fontWithSize: requiredFontSize];
}
Here is the new method:
- (CGFloat)requiredFontSize
{
const CGRect textBounds = [self textRectForBounds: self.frame];
const CGFloat maxWidth = textBounds.size.width;
if( _originalFontSize == -1 ) _originalFontSize = self.font.pointSize;
UIFont* font = self.font;
CGFloat fontSize = _originalFontSize;
BOOL found = NO;
do
{
if( font.pointSize != fontSize )
{
font = [font fontWithSize: fontSize];
}
CGSize size = [self.text sizeWithFont: font];
if( size.width <= maxWidth )
{
found = YES;
break;
}
fontSize -= 1.0;
if( fontSize < self.minimumFontSize )
{
fontSize = self.minimumFontSize;
break;
}
} while( TRUE );
return( fontSize );
}

Answer 3

I think you want to set the adjustsFontSizeToFitWidth property for your UITextField to YES, and specify a minimumFontSize. Works for me, but I add the UITextField programmatically - IB issue?

Answer 4

Swift 3.0 way to resize the font to fit:
let startFontSize = 14.0
let minFontSize = 7.0
func resizeFont() {
guard let font = self.font, let text = self.text else {
return
}
let textBounds = self.textRect(forBounds: self.bounds)
let maxWidth = textBounds.size.width
for fontSize in stride(from: startFontSize, through: minFontSize, by: -0.5) {
let size = (text as NSString).size(attributes: [NSFontAttributeName: font.withSize(CGFloat(fontSize))])
self.font = font.withSize(CGFloat(fontSize))
if size.width <= maxWidth {
break
}
}
}

Answer 5

Try this its working for me (swift 3.0)
func textField(_ textField: UITextField, shouldChangeCharactersIn range: NSRange, replacementString string: String) -> Bool {
// bla bla ... anything inside method you want to do
// reset font size of textfield
textField.font = UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: CGFloat(15.0))
var widthOfText: CGFloat = textField.text!.size(attributes: [NSFontAttributeName: textField.font!]).width
var widthOfFrame: CGFloat = textField.frame.size.width
// decrease font size until it fits (25 is constant that works for me)
while (widthOfFrame - 25) < widthOfText {
let fontSize: CGFloat = textField.font!.pointSize
textField.font = textField.font?.withSize(CGFloat(fontSize - 0.5))
widthOfText = (textField.text?.size(attributes: [NSFontAttributeName: textField.font!]).width)!
widthOfFrame = textField.frame.size.width
}
return true
}

Answer 6

-(BOOL)sizeFontToFit:(NSString*)aString minSize:(float)aMinFontSize maxSize:(float)aMaxFontSize
{
float fudgeFactor = 16.0;
float fontSize = aMaxFontSize;
self.font = [self.font fontWithSize:fontSize];
CGSize tallerSize = CGSizeMake(self.frame.size.width-fudgeFactor,kMaxFieldHeight);
CGSize stringSize = [aString sizeWithFont:self.font constrainedToSize:tallerSize lineBreakMode:UILineBreakModeWordWrap];
while (stringSize.height >= self.frame.size.height)
{
if (fontSize <= aMinFontSize) // it just won't fit
return NO;
fontSize -= 1.0;
self.font = [self.font fontWithSize:fontSize];
tallerSize = CGSizeMake(self.frame.size.width-fudgeFactor,kMaxFieldHeight);
stringSize = [aString sizeWithFont:self.font constrainedToSize:tallerSize lineBreakMode:UILineBreakModeWordWrap];
}
return YES;
}

Answer 7

I had this same problem with UITextFields created in StoryBoard in Xcode 5.0.2, running iOS 7.0.4. I figured out that the .minimumFontSize property could not be changed by StoryBoard, or viewDidLoad, or viewWillAppear, but that it could be changed in viewDidAppear. So the following code solved my problem:
- (void) viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
[super viewDidAppear:animated];
self.myTextField.minimumFontSize = 4.0;
[self.myTextField setNeedsLayout];
[self.myTextField layoutIfNeeded];
}

Answer 8

My humble solution for this problem was this.... (find the proper size of font on my own - to fit the size of frame) I made it inside delegate method of shouldChangeCharactersInRange:replacementString:
-(BOOL)textField:(UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange:(NSRange)range replacementString:(NSString *)string
{
// bla bla ... anything inside method you want to do
// reset font size of textfield
textField.font = [FONT_PROXY fontNormalOfSizeNormal];
CGFloat widthOfText = [textField.text sizeWithAttributes:#{NSFontAttributeName:textField.font}].width;
CGFloat widthOfFrame = textField.frame.size.width;
// decrease font size until it fits (25 is constant that works for me)
while((widthOfFrame - 25) < widthOfText){
CGFloat fontSize = textField.font.pointSize;
textField.font = [textField.font fontWithSize:fontSize - 0.5f];
widthOfText = [textField.text sizeWithAttributes:#{NSFontAttributeName:textField.font}].width;
widthOfFrame = textField.frame.size.width;
}
}

Answer 9

Tested with XCode8 and Swift 3.0.1
func getTextfield(view: UIView) -> [UITextField] {
var results = [UITextField]()
for subview in view.subviews as [UIView] {
if let textField = subview as? UITextField {
results += [textField]
} else {
results += getTextfield(view: subview)
}
}
return results
}
override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()
let allTextFields = getTextfield(view: self.view)
for textField in allTextFields
{
textField.font = UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 14)
var widthOfText: CGFloat = textField.text!.size(attributes: [NSFontAttributeName: textField.font!]).width
var widthOfFrame: CGFloat = textField.frame.size.width
while (widthOfFrame - 15) < widthOfText { // try here to find the value that fits your needs
let fontSize: CGFloat = textField.font!.pointSize
textField.font = textField.font?.withSize(CGFloat(fontSize - 0.5))
widthOfText = (textField.text?.size(attributes: [NSFontAttributeName: textField.font!]).width)!
widthOfFrame = textField.frame.size.width
}
}
}
I used viewDidLayoutSubviews to get all textfields and autoshrink the text.
Maybe someone will need this code.
For me it works perfect.
The Code is from# Marek Manduch on this site and from
#Kunal Kumar on this site:
How to get all the textfields from a view in swift

Answer 10

The catch here is that minimumFontSize is a ratio and should be between 0 and 1 :)
f.adjustsFontSizeToFitWidth = true
f.minimumFontSize = 0.5
works perfectly :)

Answer 11

Can be solved by selecting Line Breaks = Clip in IB