UILabel wrong word wrap in iOS 11

user_4591262 0
Viewed 14778

I have problem with application using XIBs without autolayout. I don't know if this is important information.

I have UILabel with 2 lines using word wrap. In iOS 10 word wrap was working correctly, and first line contained one word + special character, for example ampersand. Example:

UiLabel on ios 10

Then on iOS 11 word wrap is working somehow wrong and puts ampresand to the second line:

UiLabel on ios 11

This is problematic as longer words, that normally fitted on second line now are not being shown correctly. Any idea what has changed? I know about safeArea but it doesn't look like reason. Any ideas how to move that ampersand to the top where is plenty of space for it?

Rest of the settings: size inspector

ios11 uilabel iphone ios
8 Answers

This is a change by Apple to prevent widowed lines. From a design perspective, it is preferred to avoid having a single word on a line of text. UILabel now breaks the line in a way that the second line of text always has at least 2 words on it.

See the answer below for an option to disable it.

enter image description here

Also here's a good article about "widowed" and "orphaned" text.

user_13786940

Since iOS 14 you can use lineBreakStrategy property of UILabel instance to control this behavior.

Available values are:

NSParagraphStyle.LineBreakStrategy() // none
NSParagraphStyle.LineBreakStrategy.pushOut
NSParagraphStyle.LineBreakStrategy.hangulWordPriority
NSParagraphStyle.LineBreakStrategy.standard

To disable this behavior using Swift:

if #available(iOS 14.0, *) {
    label.lineBreakStrategy = []
}

// Alternatives
// label.lineBreakStrategy = NSParagraphStyle.LineBreakStrategy()
// label.lineBreakStrategy = .init(rawValue: 0)
// label.lineBreakStrategy = .init()

To make it work on lower iOS versions, you can use NSAttributedString:

let paragraphStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
paragraphStyle.lineBreakStrategy = []

let attributedString = NSAttributedString(string: "Your text here", attributes: [
    .paragraphStyle: paragraphStyle
])

let label = UILabel()
label.attributedText = attributedString

Objective-C:

if (@available(iOS 14.0, *)) {
    label.lineBreakStrategy = NSLineBreakStrategyNone;
}
user_30937720

This is not really an answer, but I want to add an illustration of how it is a general problem, not at all related to ampersands.

two UILabels

Both of these UILabels have identical width constraints, and the text is almost identical. But the second has the word wrap I would expect. The first is incorrect, the "about" can clearly stay on the first line.

user_1964390

A bit of a hack but you can add some zero width spaces to the end of the string to restore the old behaviour, without affecting the layout of the string otherwise that you'd get from normal spaces:

let zeroWidthSpace: Character = "\u{200B}"
let spacingForWordWrapping = String(repeating: zeroWidthSpace, count: 6)
label.text = "oneText & two" + spacingForWordWrapping
user_1914630

It seems that replacing the space before the ampersand with a non-breaking space (U+00A0) keeps the ampersand on the same line. Depending on how you are generating the text for the label, this might not be easy to automate (maybe you really do need the ampersand to be on the second line in some cases).

user_8706710

As a simple (hacky) workaround, you can often get the correct behaviour with a UILabel by adding spaces at the end of your text. Using your example:

Wraps the new (undesired) way:
"oneText & two."

Wraps the old way:
"oneText & two. " (note the 2 extra spaces at the end of the string)

The obvious downside is if those extra spaces get forced to a new line by themselves, but for something simple like a title it's often enough.

user_20790540
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