How to set custom UINavigationBarButton color

Question

I'm trying to set a custom color for a button on my UINavigationBar, but only when a particular UIViewController is being displayed in it (I know this is dubious UI design, but it's a specific customer requirement).

Our current implementation uses a Swizzle to override drawRect for all UINavigationBar objects. This is necessary so our custom navigation bar colors are applied to standard iOS screens (like when adding a new contact through standard APIs).

I want to change the tint color of the navigation bar for one particular UIViewController to be different from the others, but the Swizzle always takes precedence.

I'm testing in the iOS 4.3 Simulator. We support iOS 3.x clients and above (iPhone, iPod and iPad), so I can't just use the newer iOS 5 APIs to customize it.

Other things I've tried, without success:

Adding setStyle calls (as per this workaround) to make the button update again.
I tried the UINavigationButton hack I found here (I know this is a private API and risks Apple rejecting the app). I tried putting that code in viewWillAppear as well.

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:20

1

I think the answers to this question will answer yours. My answer, which uses a UISegmentedControl, doesn't require any private API calls.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:20

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answered Nov 22 '11 at 20:47

titaniumdecoy

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FYI, I updated the question as I discovered the source of the problem is a Swizzle that is being done elsewhere in our code. Using a UISegmentedControl might still be a suitable workaround so I will look at it. – Dan J Nov 22 '11 at 23:02
You shouldn't use swizzling, if at all possible, in a shipping app. – titaniumdecoy Nov 23 '11 at 02:43
I agree, but sadly this is existing code that I have to support :-( – Dan J Nov 23 '11 at 21:16

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:06

I got this to work by creating a UIButton with a custom background image, as per this Stackoverflow answer.

In case it helps anybody, here's my code:

#import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

UIButton *button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
[button setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"mybackground.png"] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[button setTitle:NSLocalizedString(@"Login", @"Button (9 chars limit) - Login") forState:UIControlStateNormal];
button.titleLabel.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica-Bold" size:12.0f];
[button.layer setCornerRadius:5.0f];
[button.layer setMasksToBounds:YES];
[button.layer setBorderWidth:1.0f];
[button.layer setBorderColor: [[UIColor grayColor] CGColor]];
button.frame=CGRectMake(0.0, 100.0, 60.0, 30.0);
[button addTarget:self action:@selector(myLoginActionMethod:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

self._loginButton= [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:button];

In general, I think it is best to set the tint in the UIViewController like this (although in my case this doesn't work due to the drawRect swizzle being in place on the UINavigationBar in my code):

self.navigationController.navigationBar.tintColor=[UIColor blueColor];

How to set custom UINavigationBarButton color

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