iOS Monospaced Custom Font

Question

I have a custom font included in my Xcode 7, iOS 9 targeted project. I want to make the font monospaced. I tried this, and didn\'t work:

let originalFont = UIF         


        

Answer 1

My following answer is only making numbers (not the whole font) of an existing font monospaced (if the font supports it)

At least I was searching for making numbers monospaced when finding this Thread. So I hope it will help although it answers another question.

This works just fine, tested on Swift 5 and iOS14+13:

(As long as "your font is supporting the monospaced digits feature".)

extension UIFont {

    var monospacedDigitFont: UIFont {
        let oldFontDescriptor = fontDescriptor
        let newFontDescriptor = oldFontDescriptor.monospacedDigitFontDescriptor
        return UIFont(descriptor: newFontDescriptor, size: 0)
    }

}

private extension UIFontDescriptor {

    var monospacedDigitFontDescriptor: UIFontDescriptor {
        let fontDescriptorFeatureSettings = [[UIFontDescriptor.FeatureKey.featureIdentifier: kNumberSpacingType, UIFontDescriptor.FeatureKey.typeIdentifier: kMonospacedNumbersSelector]]
        let fontDescriptorAttributes = [UIFontDescriptor.AttributeName.featureSettings: fontDescriptorFeatureSettings]
        let fontDescriptor = self.addingAttributes(fontDescriptorAttributes)
        return fontDescriptor
    }
}

Then you can use it on any label like this:

/// Label with monospacing activated
myLabel.font = myLabel.font.monospacedDigitFontDescriptor

/// Label with monospacing not activated (default is proportional spacing)
myLabel.font = myLabel.font

(source: https://blog.usejournal.com/proportional-vs-monospaced-numbers-when-to-use-which-one-in-order-to-avoid-wiggling-labels-e31b1c83e4d0)