How to change the background color of tab bar programatically?

Question

My goal is simple, change the default background color of tab bar to my own color.

For example, the default looks like this

I created my own subclass of UITabBarController, so that I don't need to change the color on every UIViewController

import UIKit

class MyTabController: UITabBarController {

    override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
        super.viewWillAppear(animated)
        self.tabBar.backgroundColor = .black
    }
}

The result is different from what I expected.

I thought that maybe it's the color, then I changed to a custom UIColor and the color looks exactly the same.

I tried changing the bar tint color as well, but its change the color of the icon when active, not the background

self.tabBar.tintColor = UIColor(red:1.00, green:0.23, blue:0.19, alpha:1.0)

The result will be

What did I do wrong?

use [UITabBar appearance] Here is nice answer for swift http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30041127/ios-8-tab-bar-item-background-colour — ekiyanov, Mar 12 '17 at 06:55

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 12 '17 at 06:41

2

You should use self.tabBar.barTintColor or have a look at UIBarStyle and self.tabBar.barStyle and see if that works.

answered Mar 12 '17 at 06:41

hola

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1

barTintColor just change the color of the icon not the background – sinusGob Mar 12 '17 at 06:49
Now just to be sure, you tried barTintColor and not tintColor? – hola Mar 12 '17 at 06:53

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 07 '17 at 09:45

I had the same problem with my app but I wanted to set up a gradient image in tabbar background and I came up with following: in applicationDidFinishLaunching method I created a function to draw a gradient and used an instance of my UITabBarController to set up a correct gradient frame depending on the width of the device.

- (UIImage *)drawGradientInView:(UITabBarController *) tabBarVC {
    CAGradientLayer *gradient = [CAGradientLayer layer];
gradient.frame = CGRectMake(CGRectGetMinX(tabBarVC.tabBar.frame), CGRectGetMinY(tabBarVC.tabBar.frame), CGRectGetWidth(tabBarVC.view.frame), CGRectGetHeight(tabBarVC.tabBar.frame));

    //set up your gradient
    //......

    UIImage *gradientImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

    return gradientImage;
}

get the instance of UITabBarController

UITabBarController *tabVC = (UITabBarController *)[UIApplication sharedApplication].windows.firstObject.rootViewController;

set your gradient

[UITabBar appearance].backgroundImage = [self drawGradientInView:tabVC];

I'm not sure if that's a correct approach but it did work for me.

How to change the background color of tab bar programatically?

2 Answers2