SwiftUI text-alignment

Question

Among the many properties of the Text view, I couldn't find any related to text alignment. I've seen in a demo that it automatically handles RTL, and when placing stuff using View's body, it always centers it automatically.

Is there some concept that I'm missing about layout system in SwiftUI and if not, how can I set the text alignment properties to the Text?

Answer 1

You can do this via the modifier .multilineTextAlignment(.center).

Apple Documentation

Answer 2

From SwiftUI beta 3 forward, you can center a text view with the frame modifier:

Text("Centered")
    .frame(maxWidth: .infinity, alignment: .center)

Answer 3

Was trying to understand this myself as other answers here mention Text.multilineTextAlignment(_:) / VStack(alignment:) / frame(width:alignment:) but each solution solves a specific problem. Eventually it depends on the UI requirement and a combination of these.

---

VStack(alignment:)

The alignment here is for the inner views in respective to one another.
So specifying .leading would associate all inner views to have their leading aligned with one another.

VStack(alignment: .leading, spacing: 6) {
  Text("Lorem ipsum dolor")
        .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
  Text("sit amet")
        .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
}
.background(Color.gray.opacity(0.1))

---

.frame

In frame(width:alignment:) or frame(maxWidth:alignment:), the alignment is for the contents within the given width.

VStack(alignment: .leading, spacing: 6) {
  Text("Lorem ipsum dolor")
      .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
  Text("sit amet")
      .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
}
.frame(width: 380, alignment: .trailing)
.background(Color.gray.opacity(0.1))

The inners views are leading aligned respective to one another but the views themselves are trailing aligned respective to the VStack.

---

.multilineTextAlignment

This specifies the alignment of the text inside and can be seen best when there are multiple lines otherwise without a defined frame(width:alignment), the width is automatically adjusted and gets affected by the default alignments.

VStack(alignment: .trailing, spacing: 6) {
  Text("0. automatic frame\n+ view at parent's specified alignment\n+ multilineTA not set by default at leading")
    .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
  Text("1. automatic frame\n+ view at parent's specified alignment\n+ multilineTA set to center")
  .multilineTextAlignment(.center)
  .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
  Text("2. automatic frame\n+ view at parent's specified alignment\n+ multilineTA set to trailing")
  .multilineTextAlignment(.trailing)
  .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
}
.frame(width: 380, alignment: .trailing)
.background(Color.gray.opacity(0.1))

---

Tests with combinations:

VStack(alignment: .trailing, spacing: 6) {
  Text("1. automatic frame, at parent's alignment")
  .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
  Text("2. given full width & leading alignment\n+ multilineTA at default leading")
  .frame(maxWidth: .infinity, alignment: .leading)
  .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
  Text("3. given full width & center alignment\n+ multilineTA at default leading")
  .frame(maxWidth: .infinity, alignment: .center)
  .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
  Text("4. given full width & center alignment\n+ multilineTA set to center")
  .multilineTextAlignment(.center)
  .frame(maxWidth: .infinity, alignment: .center)
  .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
  Text("5. given full width & center alignment\n+ multilineTA set to trailing")
  .multilineTextAlignment(.trailing)
  .frame(maxWidth: .infinity, alignment: .center)
  .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
  Text("6. given full width but no alignment\n+ multilineTA at default leading\n+ leading is based on content, looks odd sometimes as seen here")
  .frame(maxWidth: .infinity)
  .background(Color.gray.opacity(0.2))
}
.frame(width: 380)
.background(Color.gray.opacity(0.1))

Answer 4

I've actually run into the problem where I had to align text on a single line. What I've found to work is this:

Text("some text")
    .frame(alignment: .leading)

If you combine this with the frame width parameter you can get some nice text block formatting for labels and such.

Answer 5

I guess SwiftUI wants us to use wrappers like stacks for such things.

So instead of writing something like Text("Hello World").aligned(.leading), the following is encouraged:

VStack(alignment: .leading) {
    Text("Hello World")
}

Answer 6

We need to align the Text and not the Stack it's in. So calling multilineTextAlignment(.center) and setting the line limits I can be able to see the texts aligned to center. I don't know why I have to set the line limits, I thought it would expand if you have a large text.

Text("blahblah")
        .font(.headline)
        .multilineTextAlignment(.center)
        .lineLimit(50)

Answer 7

If you would like to keep constant width for the Text, the ".multilineTextAlignment(.leading)" won't take any effect until there is only one line of text.

This is the solution that worked for me:

struct LeftAligned: ViewModifier {
    func body(content: Content) -> some View {
        HStack {
            content
            Spacer()
        }
    }
}


extension View {
    func leftAligned() -> some View {
        return self.modifier(LeftAligned())
    }
}

Usage:

Text("Hello").leftAligned().frame(width: 300)

Answer 8

I'd like to use Spacer() view to aligning text block. This example show text at the trailing side:

HStack{
    Spacer()
    Text("Wishlist")
}

Answer 9

You can set alignment for Vertical stackView as leading. Like below

 VStack(alignment: .leading) {
            Text("Turtle Rock")
                .font(.title)
            Text("Joshua Tree National Park")
                .font(.subheadline)
        }

Answer 10

Not sure if this is the answer you are looking for but I have experienced that SwiftUI automatically switches to RTL for languages like Arabic, you don't need to explicitly specify that like in UIKit.