iOS8 How to set TabBarItem images

Question

It seems something has changed with iOS8 and now none of my tab bar icons are showing up properly. Most of the time they don't show until the tab is active:

But sometimes they don't show up at all and give me just a big blue box (like whenever I dismiss a view that covered the whole window):

This is what I did pre iOS8:

UITabBarController *tabBarController = (UITabBarController *)self.window.rootViewController;
UITabBar *tabBar = tabBarController.tabBar;
UITabBarItem *tabBarItem1 = [tabBar.items objectAtIndex:0];
[tabBarItem1 setFinishedSelectedImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"paintbrush-white.png"] withFinishedUnselectedImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"paintbrush-black.png"]];
tabBarItem1.imageInsets = UIEdgeInsetsMake(6, 0, -6, 0);
tabBarItem1.title = @"";

Answer 1

as mentioned, if you take a look at:

https://developer.apple.com/Library/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UITabBarItem_Class/index.html#//apple_ref/occ/instm/UITabBarItem/setFinishedSelectedImage:withFinishedUnselectedImage:

you will notice that this method is deprecated, try to change:

[tabBarItem1 setFinishedSelectedImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"paintbrush-white.png"] withFinishedUnselectedImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"paintbrush-black.png"]];

to:

[tabBarItem1 setImage:[[UIImage imageNamed:@"paintbrush-white.png"] imageWithRenderingMode:UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal]];
[tabBarItem1 setSelectedImage:[[UIImage imageNamed:@"paintbrush-black.png"] imageWithRenderingMode:UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal]];

You may also have problems with the image size, depends of the size of image when testing in iPhone 5 screen and iPhone 6 screen for @2x images

Answer 2

Did you try setSelectedImage:?

UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"img.png"] [tabItem setSelectedImage:image];

It works on my part.

Answer 3

This method is deprecated in iOS 8:

Use initWithTitle:image:selectedImage: or the image and selectedImage properties along with UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal