iOS 7 Tab bar icons temporarily disappear when on More tab

Question

When I add a view controller embedded by navigation controller, to a tab bar, its icon + title disappear briefly when coming back to the More tab.

However when the view controller is added as such, the icon+image are okay and don't disappear.

I've tried many things already, and am out of options. Any ideas?

Here's my AppDelegate code:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions
{
    self.window = [[UIWindow alloc] initWithFrame:[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds]];
    self.tabBarController = [[UITabBarController alloc] init];

    // Must be placed here, just before tabs are added.  Otherwise navigation bar
    // will overlap with status bar.
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:NO withAnimation:UIStatusBarAnimationSlide];

    [self addViewControllersToTabBar];
    self.window.rootViewController = self.tabBarController;
    self.window.backgroundColor    = [UIColor whiteColor];
    [self.window makeKeyAndVisible];

    return YES;
}

- (void)addViewControllersToTabBar
{
    NSArray* tabBarClassNames =
    @[
      NSStringFromClass([FirstViewController  class]),
      NSStringFromClass([SecondViewController class]),
      NSStringFromClass([FirstViewController  class]),
      NSStringFromClass([FirstViewController  class]),
      NSStringFromClass([FirstViewController  class]),
      NSStringFromClass([SecondViewController class]),
      NSStringFromClass([FirstViewController  class]),
      ];

    NSMutableArray* viewControllers = [NSMutableArray array];
    for (NSString* className in tabBarClassNames)
    {
        UIViewController*       viewController = [[NSClassFromString(className) alloc] init];
        UINavigationController* navigationController;

        navigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:viewController];

        [viewControllers addObject:navigationController];
    }

    [viewControllers addObject:[[FirstViewController alloc] init]]; // This one is fine.

    self.tabBarController.viewControllers        = viewControllers;
    self.tabBarController.selectedViewController = viewControllers[2];
}

and the view controllers are literally nothing more than:

@implementation SecondViewController

- (instancetype)init
{
    if (self = [super init])
    {
        self.title            = @"second";
        self.tabBarItem.image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"second.png"];
    }

    return self;
}

@end

Answer 1

Holy shit, spent so much time on this bug, but here's my workaround. Instead of:

navigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:viewController];

I created my own NavigationController as subclass of UINavigationController:

@implementation NavigationController

- (instancetype)initWithRootViewController:(UIViewController*)rootViewController
{
    if (self = [super initWithRootViewController:rootViewController])
    {
        NSString* className = NSStringFromClass([rootViewController class]);
        NSString* name      = [className stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"ViewController" withString:@""];

        self.tabBarItem.image = [UIImage imageNamed:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@Tab.png", name]];
    }

    return self;
}

@end

and then do:

navigationController = [[NavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:viewController];

Prerequisite is that tab images have the same base name as the view controller class name, which was already the case in my app.

I was setting self.tabBarItem.image inside the view controllers' init method, and this seems to cause the effect I was seeing. So in addition to using my own navigation controller, I also simply deleted setting the tabBarItem in each individual view controller.