iOS 8 UINavigationController disable Back Button

Question

in my Navigation Controller I need to temporarily disable the back button. I know that it can be hidden using the following or something similar:

[self.navigationController.navigationItem setHidesBackButton:YES animated:YES];

But that is not what I need, instead I want the back button to be greyed out and non-responsive to user touch events. Is their a way to achieve this without replacing the default back button?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

To disable the back button, these commands would make it do what you want it to do:

Enable:

self.navigationController.navigationBar.userInteractionEnabled = YES;
self.navigationController.navigationBar.tintColor = [UIColor blueColor];

Disabled:

self.navigationController.navigationBar.userInteractionEnabled = NO;
self.navigationController.navigationBar.tintColor = [UIColor lightGrayColor];

Update:

As of iOS 7, there's also a swipe that you'll want to disable on the UINavigationBar.

// You wrap it an 'if' statement so it doesn't crash
if ([self.navigationController respondsToSelector:@selector(interactivePopGestureRecognizer)]) {
// disable the interactivePopGestureRecognizer
    self.navigationController.interactivePopGestureRecognizer.enabled = NO;
}

Answer 2

This hides the back button, so it becomes unreachable for the user. And it disables the swipe gesture.

[self.navigationItem setHidesBackButton:YES animated:YES];

Swift:

navigationItem.setHidesBackButton(true, animated: true)

See more info in Apple's documentation.