Changing navigation title programmatically

Question

You change the title by changing the title of the view controller being displayed:

viewController.title = "some title"

Normally this is done in view did load on the view controller:

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    self.title = "some title"
}

However, this only works if you have your view controller embedded in a UINavigationController. I highly recommend doing this instead of creating a navigation bar yourself. If you insist on creating a navigation bar yourself, you can change the title by doing:

navigationBar.topItem.title = "some title"

Try the following in viewDidLoad

self.navigationItem.title = "Your Title"

The code below works for me with Xcode 7:

override func viewDidLoad() {        
    super.viewDidLoad()
    self.navigationItem.title = "Your Title"
}

I found this to work:

navigationItem.title = "Title"

and also if you will try to create Navigation Bar manually this code will help you

func setNavBarToTheView() {
    let navBar: UINavigationBar = UINavigationBar(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: self.view.frame.size.width, height: 64.0))
    self.view.addSubview(navBar);
    let navItem = UINavigationItem(title: "Camera");
    let doneItem = UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: UIBarButtonSystemItem.cancel, target: self, action: #selector(CameraViewController.onClickBack));
    navItem.leftBarButtonItem = doneItem;
    navBar.setItems([navItem], animated: true);
}

The correct answer for people using swift4 would be

override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    self.navigationItem.title = "Your Text"
}

Normally, the best-practice is to set the title on the UIViewController. By doing this, the UINavigationItem is also set. Generally, this is better than programmatically allocating and initializing a UINavigationBar that's not linked to anything.

You miss out on some of the benefits and functionality that the UINavigationBar was designed for. Here is a link to the documentation that may help you. It discusses the different properties you can set on the actual bar and on a UINavigationItem.

Just keep in mind:

1. You lose back button functionality (unless you wire it yourself)
2. The built-in "drag from the left-hand side to swipe back" gesture is forfeited

UINavigationController's are your friends.