Add a border outside of a UIView (instead of inside)

Unfortunately, there isn't simply a little property you can set to align the border to the outside. It draws aligned to the inside because the UIViews default drawing operations draw within its bounds.

The simplest solution that comes to mind would be to expand the UIView by the size of the border width when applying the border:

CGFloat borderWidth = 2.0f;

self.frame = CGRectInset(self.frame, -borderWidth, -borderWidth);
self.layer.borderColor = [UIColor yellowColor].CGColor;
self.layer.borderWidth = borderWidth;

With the above accepted best answer i made experiences with such not nice results and unsightly edges:

So i will share my UIView Swift extension with you, that uses a UIBezierPath instead as border outline – without unsightly edges (inspired by @Fattie):

//  UIView+BezierPathBorder.swift

import UIKit

extension UIView {

    fileprivate var bezierPathIdentifier:String { return "bezierPathBorderLayer" }

    fileprivate var bezierPathBorder:CAShapeLayer? {
        return (self.layer.sublayers?.filter({ (layer) -> Bool in
            return layer.name == self.bezierPathIdentifier && (layer as? CAShapeLayer) != nil
        }) as? [CAShapeLayer])?.first
    }

    func bezierPathBorder(_ color:UIColor = .white, width:CGFloat = 1) {

        var border = self.bezierPathBorder
        let path = UIBezierPath(roundedRect: self.bounds, cornerRadius:self.layer.cornerRadius)
        let mask = CAShapeLayer()
        mask.path = path.cgPath
        self.layer.mask = mask

        if (border == nil) {
            border = CAShapeLayer()
            border!.name = self.bezierPathIdentifier
            self.layer.addSublayer(border!)
        }

        border!.frame = self.bounds
        let pathUsingCorrectInsetIfAny =
            UIBezierPath(roundedRect: border!.bounds, cornerRadius:self.layer.cornerRadius)

        border!.path = pathUsingCorrectInsetIfAny.cgPath
        border!.fillColor = UIColor.clear.cgColor
        border!.strokeColor = color.cgColor
        border!.lineWidth = width * 2
    }

    func removeBezierPathBorder() {
        self.layer.mask = nil
        self.bezierPathBorder?.removeFromSuperlayer()
    }

}

Example:

let view = UIView(frame: CGRect(x: 20, y: 20, width: 100, height: 100))
view.layer.cornerRadius = view.frame.width / 2
view.backgroundColor = .red

//add white 2 pixel border outline
view.bezierPathBorder(.white, width: 2)

//remove border outline (optional)
view.removeBezierPathBorder()