How to set the font, caret position, and margins (insets) on a JTextArea component

The following source code shows how to set the font, caret position, and margins on a JTextArea component:

JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea();

// somewhere later in your code ...
textArea.setFont(new Font("Monaco", Font.PLAIN, 12));
textArea.setMargin(new Insets(12, 12, 12, 12));

textArea.setCaretPosition(0);

The Font and margin/insets probably make sense in terms of what they do.

The reason I set the caret position at position zero is in case the textarea gets filled with a lot of content; in that situation it will scroll the textarea to the bottom, and setting the caret position at 0 makes sure the beginning of the text is shown at the beginning of the JTextArea. One note about this: you probably have to set that caret position after you set the actual text (String) in the textarea. It’s been a while since I wrote this, but I think that’s true.