Make JEditorPane use the system font

JEditorPane is a powerful component. One of it’s main strengths is the ability to render auto-wrapping text. But JEditorPane doesn’t come free of imperfections. My biggest gripe is that as soon as you install an HTMLEditorKit (say to render some hyperlinks or custom colored text) the default font changes to Times New Roman [insert finger in throat].

Here’s what a JEditorPane setup for HTML rendering gives you by default:

        // create a JEditorPane that renders HTML.
        JEditorPane editorPane = 
                new JEditorPane(new HTMLEditorKit().getContentType(),text);
        editorPane.setOpaque(false);
        editorPane.setBorder(null);
        editorPane.setEditable(false);

Not ideal if your trying to blend in with other components like labels and buttons.

Unfortunately, simply calling set font on JEditorPane will have no effect, as the default font is pulled from a style sheet rather than the JComponent. There is, however, a clever way around the errant font default. The best way to change the default font in an HTML rendering JEditorPane, is to alter the style sheet like this:

        // create a JEditorPane that renders HTML and defaults to the system font.
        JEditorPane editorPane = 
                new JEditorPane(new HTMLEditorKit().getContentType(),text);
        // set the text of the JEditorPane to the given text.
        editorPane.setText(text);
        
        // add a CSS rule to force body tags to use the default label font
        // instead of the value in javax.swing.text.html.default.csss
        Font font = UIManager.getFont("Label.font");
        String bodyRule = "body { font-family: " + font.getFamily() + "; " +
                "font-size: " + font.getSize() + "pt; }";
        ((HTMLDocument)editorPane.getDocument()).getStyleSheet().addRule(bodyRule);
        
        editorPane.setOpaque(false);
        editorPane.setBorder(null);
        editorPane.setEditable(false);

and you end up with this:

The real beauty of this, is that it works across platforms, always giving you the system default font.