I downloaded the new Xcode and in Interface Builder I'm having a ton of problems with warnings that say things like:
Fixed Width Constraints May Cause Clipping
It looks like this:
I do have localization for several languages and I understand the warning that in another language a label's size may change, but my app doesn't have this problem. I ran and tested it in Xcode 8 yesterday, it was fine. I don't want to spend hours and hours adding pointless new constraints.
Any suggested solutions?
I was getting the same warnings even without multiple languages in my app, which led me to find out what was really going on. . .
There are a few different things going on here. I was able to silence the fixed-width warnings in my own app by changing the width of the object spacings from fixed width to greater than or equal or less than or equal.
This can be done by selecting the object in interface builder, going to the size inspector and changing it there:
Or, select the constraint from the document outline, go to size inspector, and change it there:
As far as the warning at the top of your screenshot:
Fixed leading and trailing constraints with a center constraint may
cause clipping
Here is a screenshot from my own app in which I was getting the exact same warning:
I had the label with the # sign set to leading and trailing to the buttons but also to align the center with the rating label. Once I removed the center alignment constraint, the warning disappeared, but I was left with an improperly laid out set of objects.
It is then that I resigned myself to embrace the Stack View. As annoying as it is to use, when you get all of the constraints and settings right, it lays out beautifully and with no warnings.
Edit
As Repose writes in the comments, sometimes simply adding >= 0 will be what you need, as you are making sure two elements do not overlap.
You can try Disabling "Respect Language Direction" on per Constraint basis to silence the warning and see if it helps. Select your constraint and open Attributes/Size Inspector. Please see image attached.
If you are not planning on localizing your app to other languages, then this solution should not have any drawbacks. For localized apps you have to be more conscious of your label and font sizes.
p.s. This solution works for iOS. For macOS try >= or <= to silence the warning.
p.p.s. Labels in the picture below are much easier to create using AutoLayout and attributedString property on a single UILabel or UITextView using NSMutableAttributedString. The image is for demonstration purposes only.
For labels and buttons which are localized this warning makes sense and you should provide the necessary constraints so your labels don't overlap. If they don't overlap now they might in the future, so it won't hurt to provide the constraints.
Xcode helps you add these constraints automatically:
In the document outline of your storyboard click on the yellow arrow and either choose "fixed leading" or "fixed trailing", depending on where the text is on your screen (left or right). This will fix it for most issues.
If you have this issue with a Button without any text (only image), try to remove the "default title" which might still be set for the button:
With Labels, you can set Lines is 0 and Autoshrink properties is Minimum Font Size to remove Fixed Width Constraints May Cause Clipping warnings, like this:
Another quick solution !
For a UIButton by changing the title from plain to Attributed text also resolved my issue:-
I know this question has already been answered but what I did to fix this error in my case was to add the "Aspect ratio" property and then eliminate the width or height constraint this worked pretty well and was less effort, and I managed to keep the same output and adapt my view for the different devices.
Swift 4 , Xcode 9.1 :
About this issue, I think your object don't know what it's the correct center position in the context of it's superview, and using remove, greater than or other leading/trealing settings most of times don't work correctly. First, you must check the correct constraints of your superview.
If your superview/s are correctly setted, you can try to "explain" to your object what is the correct position in the view by setting the "horizontally in Container" constraint:
If you need fixed width constraint for button just set width constraint priority to 700.
I had the same problem, but when I changing to >= it automatically set the constant to 0, if I choose 60 for instance, the warning appears again. So I was in a loop with the problem.
I could fix embedding my Label in a View
Editor > Embed In > View
In Label I set Top, Bottom, Leading and Trailing with constant = 0
In View I set the constraints that I was expecting before.
I had the same problem when moving to Xcode 9 and found an approach that's useful for certain kinds of layouts. In my case, I wanted a table header in which two columns (UILabels) were of fixed width and another was of variable width. Regardless of how I specified column widths (including using constraints greater than or equal instead of equal, etc.), I kept getting the warning about possible clipping. In my case, I wanted the variable width column (UILabel) to clip if necessary. I could have just ignored the warning, but don't like doing that.
The approach that worked here was to create a UIView with appropriate size constraints and embed the UILabel as a subview in the UIView. Then truncation happens if necessary and I get no warning. This works whether the UIView/embedded UILabel is in a StackView or not.
This is essentially the same approach as that of Haroldo Gondim but here you can see it also works with or without StackView.
The following image shows the approach, with and without StackView. "SpacerName" is a variable width UIView containing a label and "SpacerPD" is one with a fixed width of 80. [Colors are not significant; just there to show where the views are.]
As you can see in the image below, I was having the error "Fixed Width Constraints May Cause Clipping" because although I had set my textbox to be vertically centered and my label to have a left margin constraint, I hadn't defined a constraint for the text box in relation to the label, so XCode was alerting me that the textbox could clip (be rendered above) the label.
After adding the left constraint to the text box to always stay some distance apart from the label the error was considered solved by XCode and it didn't bothered me with the constraint warning anymore.
I had a similar issue when trying have the button with the same paddings from the edges of the super view.
I've ended up using horizontal center constraint and equal widths constraint to the super view.
To Fix The Error: Fixed Width Constraints May Cause Clipping” and Other Localization
You need to select the view/object, go to the "Show Size Inspector", find the Width Constraint and set the Constant to Greater or Equal to:
To Fix The Error: Leading/Trailing constraint is missing which may cause overlapping with other views
This means that the view/object Xcode is complaining about, is missing a Leading or Trailing Constraint to a neighboring view.
While holding control, drag to a near by view/object
Add a Leading or Trailing Constraint
I have an NSTextView inside NSScrollView/NSClipView, the usual setup. When I magnify the scroll view with [NSScrollView setMagnification:...] and resize the window, the width of text view's frame gets constantly larger, regardless of whether I stretch or shrink the window.
If the scroll view is not magnified, text view behaves normally. I have tried removing constraints and disabled subview autoresizing, but nothing helps. Whenever i set any sort of magnification, text view size changes on every call to resize. If the magnification is under 1, it shrinks.
Any bugs in TextContainer shouldn't make it wider either, as I've set textContainer.widthTracksTextView = false;
I am trying to keep the textContainer centered in my NSTextView by setting insets to it, but it gets impossible with the varying sizes. I've gone through my code and nothing should make it resize. Is this a bug or does the setMagnify: cause problems with constraints or some other math in LayoutManager?
For anyone trying to figure this out:
This is caused by a minimum width constraint for the magnified view, or any of its subviews. Seems like a bug, as I can't wrap my head around how this would be intended behaviour.
Just remove the >= constraint and do something to limit the size in run-time if needed.
I have a window I'm setting up with auto layout. There is a view in the middle of the window that contains three controls, and I would like the window to refuse to resize horizontally smaller than the intrinsic size of those three controls.
The outer buttons both have horizontal space constraints to "stick" them to the outside of their superview, and the checkbox in the middle has a horizontal space constraint sticking it to the left side of the "Sync text" button. There is also a >= constraint between the "Sync outline" button and the checkbox, to make sure they don't overlap, but the checkbox prefers to hang to the right. All these constraints have a priority of 1000. The window itself has no minimum size specified.
When I use the "Simulate Document" command in Xcode, everything works as I'd expect, and the window won't let you size it smaller than in the screenshot above. However, when I run my application, the window does allow resizing smaller than that width, so that the buttons start to shrink and eventually the controls overlap each other. I'm not implementing any of the size related window delegate methods, so I don't see any place in the app's code where it might be influencing the resizing.
Any ideas on what could be causing this difference in behavior?
OK, I finally figured out what the heck was going on here. It turns out the problem was that I was implementing the -splitView:constraintMinCoordinate:ofSubviewAt: delegate method (as well as the maxCoordinate one) to restrict the size of the split subviews in the vertical direction. Yes, restricting the vertical resizing of the split view affected the horizontal layout of the buttons.
It appears that what happens is that, if you implement those delegate methods, NSSplitView reverts back to using autoresizing masks to layout the subviews rather than auto layout constraints. Since the view containing those buttons is no longer participating in auto layout, the buttons smush together when you resize the window small. In the simulator, the split view doesn't have a delegate set, so all the auto layout stuff works fine in that environment. Note that merely having the methods implemented is enough to trigger this, even if they just return the proposed coordinates unchanged.
The solution ended up being quite easy, which was to delete the delegate methods and replace it with a vertical constraint on the subview to restrict its size instead.
I'm trying to get the hang of NSViewConstraints. I like them a lot; they make a lot more sense to me than the previous system.
I have a window, a 22 pixel-tall subview spanning the top of it, and a tabless, borderless NSTabView beneath it. The goal is to have the top subview never resize its height.
Without any constraints, auto formatting takes care of most of the work. The only trouble is resizing the window causes the upper subview to change its height. My seemingly logical response was to pin the height at 22. I left margin constraints alone, since the NSTabView was already handling resizing well.
By pinning the height of the upper subview, the window now refuses to resize vertically! I don't see any documentation anywhere saying this is expected or the logic behind it. I've messed with various constraint configurations to overcome it but nothing works.
Two questions:
Why is pinning the height of one subview freezing window height resizing? What is Xcode's logic?
What constraint setup will achieve the desired positioning?
I just tested creating a window as you describe, and pinning the height of the 22px view. This created one user constraint on the view for it's height.
However, it also created 2 constraints on the parent view (the window's content view), one for the Top Space to the 22px view, and a second for the Bottom Space to the 22px view. These constraints are what's preventing you from resizing your window. You should select the second constraint and delete it (but leave the first one in place as it's fine).
When laying out an NSPanel in IB I usually open a big window space, add and lay out the content elements, then resize the window to fit.
In Xcode 4.4 the items I add always seem to have space constraints associated with them and resize as I resize the enclosing elements and I can't seem to be able to turn this behaviour off.
I've tried setting the constraints to 'less than or equal', but it has no effect. This is insanely irritating, it's as if I need to build my UI from the outside inward, which is crazy.
Any suggestions?
You need to disable the auto layout check-box in attributes for the xib...
I had the same problem but found this on google: http://gentlebytes.com/2011/09/auto-layout-in-lion/