How do you add multi-line text to a UIButton?

Owain Hunt picture Owain Hunt · Mar 3, 2009 · Viewed 187.4k times · Source

I have the following code...

UILabel *buttonLabel = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:targetButton.bounds];
buttonLabel.text = @"Long text string";
[targetButton addSubview:buttonLabel];
[targetButton bringSubviewToFront:buttonLabel];

...the idea being that I can have multi-line text for the button, but the text is always obscured by the backgroundImage of the UIButton. A logging call to show the subviews of the button shows that the UILabel has been added, but the text itself cannot be seen. Is this a bug in UIButton or am I doing something wrong?

Answer

jessecurry picture jessecurry · Dec 1, 2009

For iOS 6 and above, use the following to allow multiple lines:

button.titleLabel.lineBreakMode = NSLineBreakByWordWrapping;
// you probably want to center it
button.titleLabel.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter; // if you want to 
[button setTitle: @"Line1\nLine2" forState: UIControlStateNormal];

For iOS 5 and below use the following to allow multiple lines:

button.titleLabel.lineBreakMode = UILineBreakModeWordWrap;
// you probably want to center it
button.titleLabel.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentCenter;
[button setTitle: @"Line1\nLine2" forState: UIControlStateNormal];

2017, for iOS9 forward,

generally, just do these two things:

  1. choose "Attributed Text"
  2. on the "Line Break" popup select "Word Wrap"