Insert UITabBarItem at Specific Index

Question

My Swift 4 UITabBarController usually has four UITabBarItem items on it. In certain circumstances it can have five instead of four, but I always want the far right button to be the same. That means I need to dynamically insert and/or remove the UITabBarItem in the fourth "slot".

I'm able to handle adding and removing the UITabBarItem in code with no problem, but I haven't been able to determine how to do it other than by using .append, which only will add it to the fifth "slot".

Hours of poring over the Apple documentation and Stack Overflow have yielded no solution. How can I insert a UITabBarItem at a specific index?

`myTBC.viewControllers?.insert(vc5, at: 3)` and `myTBC.viewControllers?.remove(at: 3)` — vacawama, Dec 20 '17 at 04:52
@vacawama Great Scott! That was exactly what I needed. Can I ask where you found that? And can you please post that as an answer instead of a comment so I can flag it as the accepted answer? THANKS! — David Vincent Gagne, Dec 20 '17 at 05:21

vacawama · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-20T05:34:04.067

The UITabBarController has a property called viewControllers which is the array of viewControllers that it manages.

If you want to insert a new viewController (let's call it vc5) at slot 4, then you need to insert it into that array at index 3 since the counting starts at 0:

myTBC.viewControllers?.insert(vc5, at: 3)

Likewise, to remove a viewController from the 4th slot:

myTBC.viewControllers?.remove(at: 3)

You can read more about working with UITabBarController here. Also check out Array mutating functions insert(_:at:) and remove(at:).

Insert UITabBarItem at Specific Index

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