How do you customise UISearchBar colors in iOS7?

Question

I have searched quite a bit but cannot find a good answer to this.

I want to change the backgroundColor of the inner rounded view.

Like in Tweetbot on the search tap where it changes from gray to blue.

I understand that I probably need to iterate over the subviews but I don't know how to get the right object. (for the backgroundColor it's not the _searchLabel)

The default contrast of this element is so bad it's not even funny :(

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13817330/how-to-change-inside-background-color-of-uisearchbar-component-on-ios?rq=1 Does this help? — 4GetFullOf, Jan 21 '14 at 16:30
nope :( I don't want to add a background image. just change the color of the inner rounded view. — 1b0t, Jan 21 '14 at 16:37
I meant the solution 2 answers below that one your referring too — 4GetFullOf, Jan 21 '14 at 16:41
what answer exactly? they all change just the background image ?!? — 1b0t, Jan 21 '14 at 16:45

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

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Ok, this works. But note that you can't set a UIBarStyle beforehand or it will override everything. https://stackoverflow.com/a/19836215/1252720

edited May 23 '17 at 10:25

Community

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answered Jan 21 '14 at 17:02

1b0t

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score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:49

If you're still looking for a better answer, I just stumbled across this thread and found a great solution: UISearchBar text color change in iOS 7

If you look at the answer given by Sandeep-Systematix (not the accepted answer, but the answer right below), he mentions a really clean way to modify subviews in any class with this method:

[[UITextField appearanceWhenContainedIn:[UISearchBar class], nil] setTextColor:[UIColor blueColor]];

You can read more about this in Apple's documentation: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/uikit/reference/UIAppearance_Protocol/Reference/Reference.html

That said, here's what you'll need to change the white, rounded background of the UITextField inside the UISearchBar:

[[UITextField appearanceWhenContainedIn:[UISearchBar class], nil] setBackgroundColor:[UIColor redColor]];

Now if you needed to create different UISearchBars with different styles, you would simply create a subclass of UISearchBar and you'd end up with something like this:

[[UITextField appearanceWhenContainedIn:[MyCustomSearchBar class], nil] setBackgroundColor:[UIColor redColor]];

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 21 '14 at 16:52

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Use this code.

_searchBar = [[UISearchBar alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, self.contentView.bounds.size.width, 44.0f)];
_searchBar.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth;
_searchBar.delegate         = self;
[self.view addSubView:_searchBar];

UITextField *txfSearchField = [_searchBar valueForKey:@"_searchField"];
txfSearchField.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];

answered Jan 21 '14 at 16:52

Balram Tiwari

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This would lead to app store rejection. – STANGMMX Jan 10 '15 at 23:05

How do you customise UISearchBar colors in iOS7?

3 Answers3