Use AttributedString in SwiftUI Before iOS 15

Surely Nobody Needs To?

Photo by Amie Bell on Unsplash

The Problem

Before iOS 15 AttributedString for SwiftUI wasn’t a thing. Something which might produce the following result:

If you wish to have a String with text (perhaps part of the text has colour and part has a size) you might need to come up with a solution. Such a String might be:

var message: AttributedString {
    var redString = AttributedString("Is this red?")
    redString.font = .systemFont(ofSize: 18)
    redString.foregroundColor = .red
    var largeString = AttributedString("This should be larger!")
    largeString.font = .systemFont(ofSize: 24)
    return redString + largeString
}

How hard can it be?

In iOS 15 we would have:

Text(message)

But that initializer isn’t available. What should we do? We would probably have the following:

HStack {
    Text("Is this red?")
        .font(.system(size: 18))
        .foregroundColor(.red)
    Text("This should be larger!")
        .font(.system(size: 24))
}

It’s quite messy isn’t it? Doesn’t use the NSAttributedString. Quite verbose. So what should we do?

Oh, the NSAttributedString can look something like the following:

var messageAttributed: NSAttributedString {
    let redString =  NSMutableAttributedString(string: "Is this red? ", attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor: UIColor.red])
    let largeString = NSAttributedString(string: "This should be larger!", attributes: [NSAttributedString.Key.font: UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: 24)])
    redString.append(largeString)
    return redString
}

The Solution

This might not be the only possible solution. It is a solution though!

If it’s available use the iOS 15 attributed String.

public extension Text {
    init(_ attributedString: NSAttributedString) {
        if #available(iOS 15.0, *) {…