How do I change the title of the "back" button on a Navigation Bar

Question

This should be placed in the method that calls the ViewController titled "NewTitle". Right before the push or popViewController statement.

UIBarButtonItem *newBackButton = 
        [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"NewTitle" 
                                         style:UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered 
                                        target:nil 
                                        action:nil];
[[self navigationItem] setBackBarButtonItem:newBackButton];
[newBackButton release];

In ChildVC this worked for me...

self.navigationController.navigationBar.topItem.title = @"Back";

Works in Swift too!

self.navigationController!.navigationBar.topItem!.title = "Back"

Here is the documentation for backBarButtonItem:

"When this navigation item is immediately below the top item in the stack, the navigation controller derives the back button for the navigation bar from this navigation item. [...] If you want to specify a custom image or title for the back button, you can assign a custom bar button item (with your custom title or image) to this property instead."

View Controller A (the "parent" view controller):

self.title = @"Really Long Title";
UIBarButtonItem *backButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"Short" style:UIBarButtonItemStyleBordered target:nil action:nil];
self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = backButton;

When any other view controller B is on top of the navigation stack, and A is right below it, B's back button will have the title "Short".

in Xcode 4.5 using storyboard, by far the easiest solution i've found when the value of the Back button doesn't have to change dynamically is to use the "Back Button" field associated with the Navigation Item of the View Controller to which you want the "Back" button to say something else.

e.g. in the screenshot below, i want the Back button for the view controller(s) that i push to have "Back" as the title of the Back button.

of course, this won't work if you need the back button to say something slightly different each time … there are all of the other solutions here for that.

I know, the question is very old, but I found a nice solution.

UIBarButtonItem *barButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] init];
barButton.title = @"Custom Title";
self.navigationController.navigationBar.topItem.backBarButtonItem = barButton;

Works from childView! Tested with iOS 7.

Maybe I'm being over simplistic but From Apple's documentation the wording is:

If a custom bar button item is not specified by either of the view controllers, a default back button is used and its title is set to the value of the title property of the previous view controller—that is, the view controller one level down on the stack.

The solution marked correct above sets a default button item from the parent controller. It's the right answer, but I'm solving the issue by changing self.title property of the UIViewController right before pushing the new controller onto the NavigationController stack.

This automatically updates the back button's title on the next controller, and as long as you set self.title back to what it should be in viewWillAppear I can't see this method causing too many problems.

This work better for me. Try :

 self.navigationController.navigationBar.topItem.backBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] 
initWithTitle:@"Back" style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:nil action:nil];