UIAlertController text alignment

Question

Is there a way to change the alignment of the message displayed inside a UIAlertController on iOS 8?

I believe accessing the subviews and changing it for the UILabel

Answer 1

I have successfully used the following, for both aligning and styling the text of UIAlertControllers:

let paragraphStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
paragraphStyle.alignment = NSTextAlignment.Left

let messageText = NSMutableAttributedString(
    string: "The message you want to display",
    attributes: [
        NSParagraphStyleAttributeName: paragraphStyle,
        NSFontAttributeName : UIFont.preferredFontForTextStyle(UIFontTextStyleBody),
        NSForegroundColorAttributeName : UIColor.blackColor()
    ]
)

myAlert.setValue(messageText, forKey: "attributedMessage")

You can do a similar thing with the title, if you use "attributedTitle", instead of "attributedMessage"

Swift 3 update

The above still works in Swift 3, but the code has to be slightly altered to this:

let messageText = NSMutableAttributedString(
    string: "The message you want to display",
    attributes: [
        NSParagraphStyleAttributeName: paragraphStyle,
        NSFontAttributeName : UIFont.preferredFont(forTextStyle: UIFontTextStyle.body),
        NSForegroundColorAttributeName : UIColor.black
    ]
)

myAlert.setValue(messageText, forKey: "attributedMessage")

Swift 4 update

let messageText = NSMutableAttributedString(
    string: "The message you want to display",
    attributes: [
        NSAttributedStringKey.paragraphStyle: paragraphStyle,
        NSAttributedStringKey.font: UIFont.preferredFont(forTextStyle: UIFontTextStyle.body),
        NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor: UIColor.black
    ]
)

myAlert.setValue(messageText, forKey: "attributedMessage")

Swift 5 update

let paragraphStyle = NSMutableParagraphStyle()
paragraphStyle.alignment = alignment
let messageText = NSAttributedString(
    string: "message",
    attributes: [
        NSAttributedString.Key.paragraphStyle: paragraphStyle,
        NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor : UIColor.primaryText,
        NSAttributedString.Key.font : UIFont(name: "name", size: size)
    ]
)

myAlert.setValue(messageText, forKey: "attributedMessage")

Answer 2

Swift 4.2 + multiline string linebreak indentation

let paragraphStyle = NSParagraphStyle.default.mutableCopy() as! NSMutableParagraphStyle

paragraphStyle.headIndent = 14

let messageText = NSMutableAttributedString(
    string: "... multiline string need linebreak indentation ...",
    attributes: [
        NSAttributedString.Key.paragraphStyle: paragraphStyle,
        NSAttributedString.Key.font: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 12),
        NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor: UIColor.gray
    ]
)

alert.setValue(messageText, forKey: "attributedMessage")