iPhone Navigation Bar Title text color

Question

Modern approach

The modern way, for the entire navigation controller… do this once, when your navigation controller's root view is loaded.

[self.navigationController.navigationBar setTitleTextAttributes:
   @{NSForegroundColorAttributeName:[UIColor yellowColor]}];

However, this doesn't seem have an effect in subsequent views.

Classic approach

The old way, per view controller (these constants are for iOS 6, but if want to do it per view controller on iOS 7 appearance you'll want the same approach but with different constants):

You need to use a UILabel as the titleView of the navigationItem.

The label should:

• Have a clear background color (label.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor]).
• Use bold 20pt system font (label.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize: 20.0f]).
• Have a shadow of black with 50% alpha (label.shadowColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.0 alpha:0.5]).
• You'll want to set the text alignment to centered as well (label.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter (UITextAlignmentCenter for older SDKs).

Set the label text color to be whatever custom color you'd like. You do want a color that doesn't cause the text to blend into shadow, which would be difficult to read.

I worked this out through trial and error, but the values I came up with are ultimately too simple for them not to be what Apple picked. :)

If you want to verify this, drop this code into initWithNibName:bundle: in PageThreeViewController.m of Apple's NavBar sample. This will replace the text with a yellow label. This should be indistinguishable from the original produced by Apple's code, except for the color.

- (id)initWithNibName:(NSString *)nibNameOrNil bundle:(NSBundle *)nibBundleOrNil
{
    self = [super initWithNibName:nibNameOrNil bundle:nibBundleOrNil];
    if (self)
    {
        // this will appear as the title in the navigation bar
        UILabel *label = [[[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease];
        label.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
        label.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:20.0];
        label.shadowColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.0 alpha:0.5];
        label.textAlignment = NSTextAlignmentCenter;
                           // ^-Use UITextAlignmentCenter for older SDKs.
        label.textColor = [UIColor yellowColor]; // change this color
        self.navigationItem.titleView = label;
        label.text = NSLocalizedString(@"PageThreeTitle", @"");
        [label sizeToFit];
    }

    return self;
}

Edit: Also, read Erik B's answer below. My code shows the effect, but his code offers a simpler way to drop this into place on an existing view controller.

I know this is a pretty old thread, but I think it would be useful to know for new users that iOS 5 brings a new property for establishing title properties.

You can use UINavigationBar's setTitleTextAttributes for setting the font, color, offset, and shadow color.

In addition you can set the same default UINavigationBar's Title Text Attributes for all the UINavigationBars throughout your application.

For example like so:

NSDictionary *navbarTitleTextAttributes = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
                                            [UIColor whiteColor],UITextAttributeTextColor, 
                                            [UIColor blackColor], UITextAttributeTextShadowColor, 
                                            [NSValue valueWithUIOffset:UIOffsetMake(-1, 0)], UITextAttributeTextShadowOffset, nil];

[[UINavigationBar appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:navbarTitleTextAttributes];

In iOS 5 you can change the navigationBar title color in this manner:

navigationController.navigationBar.titleTextAttributes = @{NSForegroundColorAttributeName: [UIColor yellowColor]};

Based on Steven Fisher's answer I wrote this piece of code:

- (void)setTitle:(NSString *)title
{
    [super setTitle:title];
    UILabel *titleView = (UILabel *)self.navigationItem.titleView;
    if (!titleView) {
        titleView = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero];
        titleView.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
        titleView.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:20.0];
        titleView.shadowColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.0 alpha:0.5];

        titleView.textColor = [UIColor yellowColor]; // Change to desired color

        self.navigationItem.titleView = titleView;
        [titleView release];
    }
    titleView.text = title;
    [titleView sizeToFit];
}

The advantage of this code, besides dealing with the frame properly, is that if you change the title of your controller the custom title view will also get updated. No need to update it manually.

Another big advantage is that it makes it really simple to enable custom title color. All you need to do is to add this method to the controller.