Center elements vertically inside UINavigationBar with custom height

Question

I'm developing an iOS 6 and 7 app that requires the navigation bar to be taller than the usual 44/64 pts I've searched high and low and so far it seems the cleanest solution is to use a category (or subclass) and implement the - (CGSize)sizeThatFits:(CGSize)size method to return a different size.

This works fine in just making , however doing this causes all the items inside to rest at the bottom of the navigation bar, while I'd like to have them centered. I have tried using the Appearance Proxy protocol to define vertical offsets for the buttons, specifically this code

[[UIBarButtonItem appearance] setBackgroundVerticalPositionAdjustment: -10    forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];
[[UIBarButtonItem appearance] setBackButtonBackgroundVerticalPositionAdjustment: -10 forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];
[[UINavigationBar appearance] setTitleVerticalPositionAdjustment: -10 forBarMetrics: UIBarMetricsDefault];

Works just fine on iOS 6, producing this result

But doesn't work on iOS 7, giving me this instead.

I have read around that under iOS 7 the adjustments only work when using custom views but it seems odd to me, especially considering that setBackButtonTitlePositionAdjustment:forBarMetrics: actually moves the text for the back button up, but not the chevron and that the title actually does nudge up.

I've also tried going for a subclassing route, using layoutSubviews to move down the views inside the UINavigationBar. This works, but of course when a new view controller is pushed the buttons jump around during the transition.

Am I missing something? Thanks in advance

UPDATE I have edited the description to make it clearer that my issue is with what's inside the bar, not the bar itself.

Answer 1

The cleanest solution I've found to this problem was to use my own subclass of UINavigationBar and center the buttons vertically by overriding the layoutSubviews method:

- (void)layoutSubviews
{
    [super layoutSubviews];

    NSArray *subviews = self.subviews;
    for (UIView *view in subviews) {
        if ([view isKindOfClass:[UIButton class]]) {
            view.frame = ({
                CGRect frame = view.frame;
                CGFloat navigationBarHeight = CGRectGetHeight(self.frame);
                CGFloat buttonHeight = CGRectGetHeight(view.frame);
                frame.origin.y = (navigationBarHeight - buttonHeight) / 2.0f;
                frame;
            });
        }
    }
}

To make a UINavigationController use your subclass of UINavigationBar you can use the initWithNavigationBarClass:toolbarClass: initialiser:

UINavigationController *navigationController = [[UINavigationController alloc] initWithNavigationBarClass:[MyNavigationBar class] toolbarClass:nil];