#842 – The Differences Between Label and TextBlock

You can use either Label or TextBlock elements to display text in an application.

        <Label Content="I'm a Label"/>
        <TextBlock Text="I'm a TextBlock"/>

The two elements appear to behave similarly, but there are a few differences:

• A Label
  • Can have an access key (mnemonic), allowing the user to give focus to a related control
  • Has a built-in border (BorderBrush, BorderThickness)
  • Has a Content property that can be set to some other element
  • Can use templates to customize the entire control or the content area of the control
  • Can align its content with HorizontalContentAlignment and VerticalContentAlignment
  • Will render as grey when IsEnabled is false
• A TextBlock
  • Can have richer text formatting, using inline formatting
  • Can wrap its text to multiple lines
  • Can hyphenate words
  • Allows specifying space between lines
  • Allows left/right/center justification using the TextAlignment property
  • Supports text decorations (e.g. underline, baseline)
  • Allows setting typography properties