How do I get the default font for Swing JTabbedPane labels?

Question

Does the text in Swing components have a default font? In particular, what about tab labels on JTabbedPanes?

I'm working on a mock-up of a GUI made with Swing and want it to blend it with a screen image I grabbed of a Swing app.

Mailemailed

Answer 1

It depends on the Look and Feel. If it's an application you've written, get the values from UIManager.getDefaults().getFont("TabbedPane.font")

Jeffreyjeffreys

Yes, thanks, that worked, although you forgot a pair of parentheses: UIManager.getDefaults().getFont("TabbedPane.font") It turned out to be Arial Bold, as I thought (for what it's worth). – Mailemailed

How do you determine the appropriate keys for other swing components? – Gaslit

You can get the font for other components by changing 'TabbedPane' to the element type you're interested in. For instance, I just found that the 'ToolTip.font' is 'Dialog'. – Sniggle

Answer 2

The UIManager Defaults shows what the values are for all properties for all components (including "TabbedPane.font").

Haemolysis

Answer 3

Based on the answer of Reverend Gonzo, this piece of code lets you know what keys are in the UIDefaults. As the keys are self-explanatory, you know what key you can use. I had to know the key for the JTextField font, for example, and could only find it this way.

Set<Object> keys = UIManager.getDefaults().keySet();
for (Object key : keys) {
     if (key instanceof String && ((String) key).contains("font")) {
          System.out.println(key + "=" + UIManager.getDefaults().get(key));
     }
}

If you're looking for a font, in your case, just cast the key to a String and check whether it contains the word "font". This way you narrow the set of keys you have potential interest for.

I got a list

• Menu.font=...
• TextField.font=...
• RadioButtonMenuItem.font=...
• ToolTip.font=...
• TitledBorder.font=...
• ...
• TabbedPane.font=...
• ...

And thus you would need to pick TabbedPane.font.

Glassblowing

Tried this on Java8 but only got a reduced subset of items. Changed the approach to assign the result of getDefaults() to a Hashtable, created an iterator and then checked its keys just as you suggested. – Ornithomancy

Answer 4

It may depend on the 'Look and Feel' you are using, but for me Swing's default font is

DejaVu Sans - Plain

For most components the font size defaults to around 12 or 13

Emigrate

Answer 5

It looks like it's Arial. That's what Identifont tells me and it looks right.

Mailemailed

Answer 6

The Java GUI default font is "Helvetica", bold size 9, color gray.

Landan

that's wrong in its absoluteness: as others already correcty answered, fonts depend on LAFs and/or OS setting – Bilyeu