How to add a badge to the system generated "More" UITabBarItem

Question

My app has 6 menu items, so the OS shows the first 4, then shows a "More" item that links to a screen where the user can select the other two.

My problem is that I want to show a badge on the More item so that the user knows that one of the menu items that is hidden needs their attention. (It's clear to our users which hidden item the badge represents since one of the hidden items is Settings and the other is current Uploads)

I don't know how to access the "More" item since the "items" array on UITabBar only contains the 6 actual UITabBarItems that I've created; it doesn't include the system generated "More" item. I've tried setting the badge on one of the hidden UITabBarItems, but no badge is ever displayed.

I didn't find much on Google, which makes me wonder if I'm going about this completely wrong. The iTunes app does the same thing when you download items. They display a More item and attach a badge to it, so I figured I was in good company, but I'll be damned if I see how they did that. (Unless they manually created a UITabBarSystemItemMore item and manually handled displaying the other menu items. Ugh.)

Answer 1

Actually you can modify the tab bar item of the "more navigation controller" of your tab bar controller. If your tab bar controller is "tabBarController", you can do it this way.

UITabBarItem *item = [tabBarController moreNavigationController].tabBarItem; 
item.badgeValue = @"100";