How to set font size to fill UILabel height?

I had the very same problem and, thanks to this thread and Joel’s algorithm, I could fix it. 🙂

Below is my code in Swift. I’m in iOS 8 + Autolayout.

Problem:

1. User inputs expenses:

2. When users tap the ‘check’ button, a menu appears from bottom, pushing everything to the top of the screen (shrinking stuff, including the label):

After the fix:

Which is exactly what the designer had in mind… 🙂

I subclassed UILabel and overrode layoutSubviews. Then each time the UILabel gets its size changed, the font size is recalculated:

//
//  LabelWithAdaptiveTextHeight.swift
//  123
//
//  Created by https://github.com/backslash-f on 12/19/14.
//

/*
 Designed with single-line UILabels in mind, this subclass 'resizes' the label's text (it changes the label's font size)
 everytime its size (frame) is changed. This 'fits' the text to the new height, avoiding undesired text cropping.
 Kudos to this Stack Overflow thread: bit.ly/setFontSizeToFillUILabelHeight
*/

import Foundation
import UIKit

class LabelWithAdaptiveTextHeight: UILabel {

    override func layoutSubviews() {
        super.layoutSubviews()
        font = fontToFitHeight()
    }

    // Returns an UIFont that fits the new label's height.
    private func fontToFitHeight() -> UIFont {

        var minFontSize: CGFloat = DISPLAY_FONT_MINIMUM // CGFloat 18
        var maxFontSize: CGFloat = DISPLAY_FONT_BIG     // CGFloat 67
        var fontSizeAverage: CGFloat = 0
        var textAndLabelHeightDiff: CGFloat = 0

        while (minFontSize <= maxFontSize) {

            fontSizeAverage = minFontSize + (maxFontSize - minFontSize) / 2

            // Abort if text happens to be nil
            guard text?.characters.count > 0 else {
              break
            }

            if let labelText: NSString = text {
                let labelHeight = frame.size.height

                let testStringHeight = labelText.sizeWithAttributes(
                    [NSFontAttributeName: font.fontWithSize(fontSizeAverage)]
                ).height

                textAndLabelHeightDiff = labelHeight - testStringHeight

                if (fontSizeAverage == minFontSize || fontSizeAverage == maxFontSize) {
                    if (textAndLabelHeightDiff < 0) {
                        return font.fontWithSize(fontSizeAverage - 1)
                    }
                    return font.fontWithSize(fontSizeAverage)
                }

                if (textAndLabelHeightDiff < 0) {
                    maxFontSize = fontSizeAverage - 1

                } else if (textAndLabelHeightDiff > 0) {
                    minFontSize = fontSizeAverage + 1

                } else {
                    return font.fontWithSize(fontSizeAverage)
                }
            }
        }
        return font.fontWithSize(fontSizeAverage)
    }
}

---

• Refer to this Pastebin for execution logs (println() of each
  iteration).