Prevent UINavigationBar in Share Extension from inheriting main application appearance settings

Question

I created a share extension for my for which I had to create my own UI in the Storyboard. The entire thing works great except for the fact that the navigation bar inherits the main app's appearance. As examples:

Here it is in the NYT app:

Here it is in the Vice app:

How can I set my own appearance?

You should be using the static methods `appearance()` in the `UIAppearance` API for the `UINavigationBar` and `UIToolbar` classes as discussed here https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIAppearance_Protocol/index.html — rolling_codes, Apr 26 '16 at 16:09

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:52

5

The share extension is intended to inherit from the main app's preferred style. Your two examples show that, and I can't recall an app that has a share extension that's styled differently.

This question includes a thorough effort to fix this problem, including links to a rdar that's filed with Apple.

Not the answer you want, but there doesn't appear to be a "non-hacky" way of achieving this.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:52

Community

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answered Apr 26 '16 at 15:52

suite22

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The default ShareExtension Controller (SLServiceController I think?) doesn't have this problem though – Quantaliinuxite Apr 26 '16 at 15:54

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered May 02 '16 at 15:40

5

What I would do is subclass UINavigationBar as MYNavigationBar, and then apply my custom appearance styles to MYNavigationBar.

I'd then use MYNavigationBar instead of UINavigationBar (just change the class type in the storyboard) throughout the app.

answered May 02 '16 at 15:40

Michael Long

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Sadly the appearance settings are passed on subclasses of a class. – Quantaliinuxite May 03 '16 at 07:49

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 04 '16 at 09:59

It simply cannot be done with existing APIs, as is pointed out by other answers. I tried subclassing UINavigationBar and even overriding things like tintColor and backgroundColor, but that didn't work either.

What I ended up doing in the end is using a view and style it to look like a navigation bar, it works well. It's a little bit hacky, but it's still ok since it will most likely never break with future releases of iOS...

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 17 '17 at 18:15

I found a way!

Just draw an Image with your color!

func getTopWithColor(color: UIColor, size: CGSize) -> UIImage {
    let rect = CGRect(x: 0,y:  0,width: size.width,height: size.height)
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(size, false, 0)
    color.setFill()
    UIRectFill(rect)
    //if let img = UIImage(named: "test.jpg") {
        //img.draw(in: CGRect(x: 0,y: 0,width: size.width,height: size.height))
    //    img.draw(in: CGRect(x: 0,y: 0,width: size.width,height: size.height), blendMode: .darken, alpha: 0.5)
    //}
    let image: UIImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()!

    UIGraphicsEndImageContext()
    return image
}

.

override func viewDidLoad() {

let c = UIColor(red: 0.5765, green: 0.2784, blue: 0, alpha: 0.5)
    //c.withAlphaComponent(CGFloat(0))
    self.navigationController?.navigationBar.tintColor = UIColor.black
    let navSize = self.navigationController?.navigationBar.frame.size
    let image1 = getTopWithColor(color: c, size: navSize!)

    self.navigationController?.navigationBar.setBackgroundImage(image1, for: .default)

Prevent UINavigationBar in Share Extension from inheriting main application appearance settings

4 Answers4