How to draw border around a UILabel?

Is there a way for UILabel to draw a border around itself? This is useful for me to debug the text placement and to see the placement and how big the label actually is.

Solution 1:

You can set label's border via its underlying CALayer property:

#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

myLabel.layer.borderColor = [UIColor greenColor].CGColor
myLabel.layer.borderWidth = 3.0

Swift 5:

myLabel.layer.borderColor = UIColor.darkGray.cgColor
myLabel.layer.borderWidth = 3.0

Solution 2:

Here are some things you can do with UILabel and its borders.

Here is the code for those labels:

import UIKit
class ViewController: UIViewController {

    @IBOutlet weak var label1: UILabel!
    @IBOutlet weak var label2: UILabel!
    @IBOutlet weak var label3: UILabel!
    @IBOutlet weak var label4: UILabel!
    @IBOutlet weak var label5: UILabel!
    @IBOutlet weak var label6: UILabel!

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        // label 1
        label1.layer.borderWidth = 1.0

        // label 2
        label2.layer.borderWidth = 5.0
        label2.layer.borderColor = UIColor.blue.cgColor

        // label 3
        label3.layer.borderWidth = 2.0
        label3.layer.cornerRadius = 8

        // label 4
        label4.backgroundColor = UIColor.cyan

        // label 5
        label5.backgroundColor = UIColor.red
        label5.layer.cornerRadius = 8
        label5.layer.masksToBounds = true

        // label 6
        label6.layer.borderWidth = 2.0
        label6.layer.cornerRadius = 8
        label6.backgroundColor = UIColor.yellow
        label6.layer.masksToBounds = true
    }
}

Note that in Swift there is no need to import QuartzCore.

See also

• Border, rounded corners, and shadow on a CALayer
• Explanation of masksToBounds
• Using a border with a Bezier path for a layer
• How to do transforms on a CALayer

Solution 3:

Swift version:

myLabel.layer.borderWidth = 0.5
myLabel.layer.borderColor = UIColor.greenColor().CGColor

For Swift 3:

myLabel.layer.borderWidth = 0.5
myLabel.layer.borderColor = UIColor.green.cgColor