Custom BackButton on NavigationController not appearing

Question

I'm trying to use a custom back button in UINavigationController but the image is not appearing.

Here's the code:

self.navigationController?.navigationBar.setBackgroundImage(UIImage(), forBarMetrics: .Default)
        self.navigationController?.navigationBar.shadowImage = UIImage()
        self.navigationController?.navigationBar.translucent = true
        self.navigationController!.view.backgroundColor = UIColor.clearColor()

        self.navigationController?.navigationBar.backIndicatorImage = UIImage(named: "Back-50")
        self.navigationController?.navigationBar.backIndicatorTransitionMaskImage = UIImage(named: "Back-50")
        self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = UIBarButtonItem(title: "", style: UIBarButtonItemStyle.Plain, target: nil, action: nil)

I'm not sure what's going wrong with this code.

Answer 1

Maybe, you should use UIAppearance.

Like this

@implementation AppDelegate

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {

    [[UINavigationBar appearance] setBackIndicatorImage: [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon-back"]];
    [[UINavigationBar appearance] setBackIndicatorTransitionMaskImage: [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon-back"]];

    return YES;
}

In swift

func application(application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [NSObject: AnyObject]?) -> Bool {

    UINavigationBar.appearance().backIndicatorTransitionMaskImage = UIImage(named: "")
    UINavigationBar.appearance().backIndicatorImage = UIImage(named: "")

    return true
}

Answer 2

If you want just your image to appear as the back button then set the tintColor of the navigationBar to clear color and then set an image based UIBarButtonItem as the backBarButtonItem of navigationItem of the controller.

let backButton = UIBarButtonItem(image: UIImage(named: "back"), style: .Plain, target: self, action: "back")
self.navigationController?.navigationBar.tintColor = UIColor.clearColor()
self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = backButton

This will make the default back button image (<) not appear (infact it appears but its in clear color so not visible) and just show the back image.