How to highlight only text in UILabel - IOS

Question

I just want to highlight only text in UILabel, I have tried by giving backgroundColor for label, but it is highlighting the empty spaces also looks

Answer 1

You can have a UIImageView, set its background color of your choice then place your UIlabel on it. That will surely solve your problem. Here is Workaround code :

 UIImageView * imgView = [[UIImageView alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(10, 10, 100, 40)];
 [imgView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor brownColor]];
 [self.view addSubview:imgView];


UILabel * label = [[UILabel alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 100, 40)];
[label setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
[label setTextAlignment:UITextAlignmentCenter];
label.text = @"My Label";
[imgView addSubview:label];


[label release];
[imgView release];

You can also achieve the same using Interface Builder.

Answer 2

This will add a subview behind the text, with the correct size:

CGSize size= [[label text] sizeWithFont:[UIFont systemFontOfSize:18.0]];
NSLog(@"%.1f | %.1f", size.width, size.height);
NSLog(@"%.1f | %.1f", label.frame.size.width, label.frame.size.height);

UIView *highlightView=[[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, size.width, size.height)];
[highlightView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor greenColor]];
[self.view insertSubview:highlightView belowSubview:label];
[highlightView setCenter:label.center];

And don't forget: [label setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];

Answer 3

try this

MTLabel

    MTLabel *label4 = [MTLabel labelWithFrame:CGRectMake(20, 270, 250, 60) 
                                  andText:@"This label is highlighted, has a custom line height, and adjusts font size to fit inside the label."];
        [label4 setLineHeight:22];
        [label4 setFont:[UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica" size:30]];
        [label4 setAdjustSizeToFit:YES];
        [label4 setMinimumFontSize:15];
        [label4 setFontHighlightColor:[[UIColor orangeColor] colorWithAlphaComponent:0.5]];
        [self.view addSubview:label4];

Answer 4

Most of the other solutions don't consider text that spans multiple lines while still only highlighting the text, and they are all pretty hacky involving extra subviews.

An iOS 6 and later solution is to use attributed strings:

NSMutableAttributedString *s =
     [[NSMutableAttributedString alloc] initWithString:yourString];

[s addAttribute:NSBackgroundColorAttributeName
          value:[UIColor greenColor]
          range:NSMakeRange(0, s.length)];

label.attributedText = s;