Changing Tint / Background color of UITabBar

Question

The UINavigationBar and UISearchBar both have a tintColor property that allows you to change the tint color (surprising, I know) of both of those items. I want to do the same thing to the UITabBar in my application, but have found now way to change it from the default black color. Any ideas?

Answer 1

iOS 5 has added some new appearance methods for customising the look of most UI elements.

You can target every instance of a UITabBar in your app by using the appearance proxy.

For iOS 5 + 6:

[[UITabBar appearance] setTintColor:[UIColor redColor]]; 

For iOS 7 and above, please use the following:

[[UITabBar appearance] setBarTintColor:[UIColor redColor]]; 

Using the appearance proxy will change any tab bar instance throughout the app. For a specific instance, use one of the new properties on that class:

UIColor *tintColor; // iOS 5+6 UIColor *barTintColor; // iOS 7+ UIColor *selectedImageTintColor; UIImage *backgroundImage; UIImage *selectionIndicatorImage; 

Answer 2

I have been able to make it work by subclassing a UITabBarController and using private classes:

@interface UITabBarController (private) - (UITabBar *)tabBar; @end  @implementation CustomUITabBarController   - (void)viewDidLoad {     [super viewDidLoad];      CGRect frame = CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, self.view.bounds.size.width, 48);     UIView *v = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:frame];     [v setBackgroundColor:kMainColor];     [v setAlpha:0.5];     [[self tabBar] addSubview:v];     [v release];  } @end