Say I have an NSMutableAttributedString .

The string has a varied mix of formatting throughout:

Here is an example:

This string is hell to change in iOS, it really sucks.

However, the font per se is not the font you want.

I want to:

for each and every character, change that character to a specific font (say, Avenir)

BUT,

for each and every character, keep the mix of other attributions (bold, italic, colors, etc etc) which was previously in place on that character.

How the hell do you do this?

Note:

if you trivially add an attribute "Avenir" over the whole range: it simply deletes all the other attribute ranges, you lose all formatting. Unfortunately, attributes are not, in fact "additive".

Since rmaddy's answer did not work for me (f.fontDescriptor.withFace(font.fontName) does not keep traits like bold), here is an updated Swift 4 version that also includes color updating:

extension NSMutableAttributedString {
    func setFontFace(font: UIFont, color: UIColor? = nil) {
        beginEditing()
        self.enumerateAttribute(
            .font, 
            in: NSRange(location: 0, length: self.length)
        ) { (value, range, stop) in

            if let f = value as? UIFont, 
              let newFontDescriptor = f.fontDescriptor
                .withFamily(font.familyName)
                .withSymbolicTraits(f.fontDescriptor.symbolicTraits) {

                let newFont = UIFont(
                    descriptor: newFontDescriptor, 
                    size: font.pointSize
                )
                removeAttribute(.font, range: range)
                addAttribute(.font, value: newFont, range: range)
                if let color = color {
                    removeAttribute(
                        .foregroundColor, 
                        range: range
                    )
                    addAttribute(
                        .foregroundColor, 
                        value: color, 
                        range: range
                    )
                }
            }
        }
        endEditing()
    }
}

Or, if your mix-of-attributes does not include font,
then you don't need to remove old font:

let myFont: UIFont = .systemFont(ofSize: UIFont.systemFontSize);

myAttributedText.addAttributes(
    [NSAttributedString.Key.font: myFont],
    range: NSRange(location: 0, length: myAttributedText.string.count));

Notes

The problem with f.fontDescriptor.withFace(font.fontName) is that it removes symbolic traits like italic, bold or compressed, since it will for some reason override those with default traits of that font face. Why this is so totally eludes me, it might even be an oversight on Apple's part; or it's "not a bug, but a feature", because we get the new font's traits for free.

So what we have to do is create a font descriptor that has the symbolic traits from the original font's font descriptor: .withSymbolicTraits(f.fontDescriptor.symbolicTraits). Props to rmaddy for the initial code on which I iterated.

I've already shipped this in a production app where we parse a HTML string via NSAttributedString.DocumentType.html and then change the font and color via the extension above. No problems so far.