How to change the background color of a UIButton while it's highlighted?

Question

At some point in my app I have a highlighted UIButton (for example when a user has his finger on the button) and I need to change the background color while the button is highlighted (so while the finger of the user is still on the button).

I tried the following:

_button.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor]; 

But it is not working. The color remains the same. I tried the same piece of code when the button is not highlighted and it works fine. I also tried calling -setNeedsDisplay after changing the color, it didn't have any effect.

How to force the button to change the background color?

Answer 1

You can override UIButton's setHighlighted method.

Objective-C

- (void)setHighlighted:(BOOL)highlighted {     [super setHighlighted:highlighted];      if (highlighted) {         self.backgroundColor = UIColorFromRGB(0x387038);     } else {         self.backgroundColor = UIColorFromRGB(0x5bb75b);     } } 

Swift 3.0 and Swift 4.1

override open var isHighlighted: Bool {     didSet {         backgroundColor = isHighlighted ? UIColor.black : UIColor.white     } } 

Answer 2

Not sure if this sort of solves what you're after, or fits with your general development landscape but the first thing I would try would be to change the background colour of the button on the touchDown event.

Option 1:

You would need two events to be capture, UIControlEventTouchDown would be for when the user presses the button. UIControlEventTouchUpInside and UIControlEventTouchUpOutside will be for when they release the button to return it to the normal state

UIButton *myButton =  [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom]; [myButton setFrame:CGRectMake(10.0f, 10.0f, 100.0f, 20.f)]; [myButton setBackgroundColor:[UIColor blueColor]]; [myButton setTitle:@"click me:" forState:UIControlStateNormal]; [myButton setTitle:@"changed" forState:UIControlStateHighlighted]; [myButton addTarget:self action:@selector(buttonHighlight:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchDown]; [myButton addTarget:self action:@selector(buttonNormal:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside]; 

Option 2:

Return an image made from the highlight colour you want. This could also be a category.

+ (UIImage *)imageWithColor:(UIColor *)color {    CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f);    UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(rect.size);    CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();     CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(context, [color CGColor]);    CGContextFillRect(context, rect);     UIImage *image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();     return image; } 

and then change the highlighted state of the button:

[myButton setBackgroundImage:[self imageWithColor:[UIColor greenColor]] forState:UIControlStateHighlighted];