Changing selectedImage on UITabBarItem in Swift

Question

I've been trying to change the selected image on a UITabBar. I've followed procedures listed on other Stackoverflow questions, but nothing seems to work.

I have tried setting the image through the User Defined Runtime Attributes section, as well as tried adding the following to AppDelegate.swift:

var tabBarController = self.window!.rootViewController as UITabBarController
let tabItems = tabBarController.tabBar.items as [UITabBarItem]

var selectedImage0 = UIImage(named:"NewsfeedTabSelected")
selectedImage0?.imageWithRenderingMode(UIImageRenderingMode.AlwaysOriginal)
tabItems[0].selectedImage = selectedImage0

This doesn't yield any results. I did a println(tabItems[0].title) and that output the correct title, so I know that the reference to the TabBarItem is working.

Any thoughts?

Have you tried using selected image in storyboard? – AMAN77 Sep 09 '16 at 10:01 — AMAN77, Sep 09 '16 at 10:01

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered May 05 '15 at 04:01

The previous answer does not fully work. I have to set the new UIImage's UIImageRenderingMode to AlwaysOriginal, this solves my situation.

code bellow:

import UIKit

class MainTab: UITabBarController {

override func viewDidLoad() {

    var tabBar = self.tabBar

    var homeSelectImage: UIImage! = UIImage(named: "firstPageSelected")?.imageWithRenderingMode(.AlwaysOriginal)
    var qaSelectImage: UIImage! = UIImage(named: "Q&ASelected")?.imageWithRenderingMode(.AlwaysOriginal)
    var mySelectImage: UIImage! = UIImage(named: "myBagSelected")?.imageWithRenderingMode(.AlwaysOriginal)

    (tabBar.items![0] as! UITabBarItem ).selectedImage = homeSelectImage
    (tabBar.items![1] as! UITabBarItem ).selectedImage = qaSelectImage
    (tabBar.items![2] as! UITabBarItem ).selectedImage = mySelectImage

    tabBar.tintColor = UIColor.greenColor()

}
}

Hope that work for you

A big + to UIImageRenderingMode finally this took me to the solutions — guru, Nov 17 '16 at 07:07

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 14 '15 at 19:43

I solved using something like this on the AppDelegate.

var tabBarController = self.window!.rootViewController as UITabBarController
var tabBar = tabBarController.tabBar as UITabBar

var tabBarItem1 = tabBar.items![0] as UITabBarItem
var tabBarItem2 = tabBar.items![1] as UITabBarItem
var tabBarItem3 = tabBar.items![2] as UITabBarItem

tabBarItem1.selectedImage = UIImage(named: "FirstSelectedImage")
tabBarItem2.selectedImage = UIImage(named: "SecondSelectedImage")
tabBarItem3.selectedImage = UIImage(named: "ThirdSelectedImage")

But there is some bug in swift, because text of tabBarItem2 disappears, when I tap it. — petesalt, Apr 28 '15 at 12:29

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 05 '15 at 04:26

Subclass/extend tabBarController and implement these methods (I know it's obj-c but it should work as directly translated to swift):

#import "const.h"
#import "MainTabBarController.h"

@interface MainTabBarController ()

@end

@implementation MainTabBarController

- (NSArray*)tabTitles {
    return @[@"Connection",
             @"Details",
             [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:@"LastProfileResponse"] ? @"Profile" : @"Login",
             @"Settings"];
}

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];


    NSArray *imageNames = @[@"connection_tab_",
                            @"details_tab_",
                            @"profile_tab_",
                            @"settings_tab_"
                            ];

    for (int i = 0; i < self.tabBar.items.count; ++i) {
        ((UITabBarItem*)self.tabBar.items[i]).title = self.tabTitles[i];

        ((UITabBarItem*)self.tabBar.items[i]).selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:[imageNames[i] stringByAppendingString:@"on"]];

        ((UITabBarItem*)self.tabBar.items[i]).image = [[UIImage imageNamed:[imageNames[i] stringByAppendingString:@"off"]] imageWithRenderingMode:UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal];
    }

    self.tabBar.translucent = false;
    self.tabBar.barTintColor = SLATE_GREEN;
    self.tabBar.tintColor = YELLOW;
    self.delegate = self;

    [[UITabBarItem appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:WHITE,
                                                                                                 NSForegroundColorAttributeName,
                                                                                                 TAB_FONT,
                                                                                                 NSFontAttributeName, nil]
                                             forState:UIControlStateNormal];
    [[UITabBarItem appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:YELLOW,
                                                                                                 NSForegroundColorAttributeName, nil]
                                             forState:UIControlStateSelected];
}

Changing selectedImage on UITabBarItem in Swift

3 Answers3

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