How can I make the text of a JLabel extend onto another line?
11 Answers
You can do it by putting HTML in the code, so:
JFrame frame = new JFrame();
frame.setLayout(new GridLayout());
JLabel label = new JLabel("<html>First line<br>Second line</html>");
frame.add(label);
frame.pack();
frame.setVisible(true);
This is horrifying. All these answers suggesting adding to the start of the label text, and there is not one word in the Java 11 (or earlier) documentation for JLabel to suggest that the text of a label is handled differently if it happens to start with <html>. Who says that works everywhere and always will? And you can get big, big surprises wrapping arbitrary text in and handing it to an html layout engine.
I've upvoted the answer that suggests JTextArea. But I'll note that JTextArea isn't a drop-in replacement; by default it expands to fill rows, which is not how JLabel acts. I haven't come up with a solution to that yet.
You can use JTextArea and remove editing capabilities to get normal read-only multiline text.
JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea("line\nline\nline");
textArea.setEditable(false);
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