Programmatically setting tabBarItem title in Swift

Question

I have four UIViewControllers that are linked to a UITabBarController's tab bar. I need to set the tab bar item titles outside of the storyboard, and inside of their classes.

I've tried..

class MyViewController: UIViewController {

    required init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)

        self.title = NSLocalizedString(MyConstants.StringKeys.TabName, tableName: Constants.Strings.MyTable, comment: Constants.EmptyString);
    }
}

This is called, but the title is never set. Same with self.tabBarItem.title = "the title"

I've also tried setting the title in viewDidLoad, but that only updates the title after going to the view controller.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

You can set the tab titles in the view controllers themselves in viewDidLoad by setting the view controller's title property.

title = "Number 0"

Alternatively, if want to set the titles from your tab bar controller, you can set them like this in your tab bar controller's viewDidLoad:

tabBar.items?[0].title = "Number 0"
tabBar.items?[1].title = "Number 1"

Answer 2

I figured it out, looks like it was being over written by awakeFromNib().

override func awakeFromNib() {
    super.awakeFromNib()

    self.title = NSLocalizedString(MyConstants.StringKeys.TabName, tableName: Constants.Strings.MyTable, comment: Constants.EmptyString);
}

I moved my self.title assignment there and it corrected my issue.

Answer 3

I've been trying different solutions but the only one what worked for me was adding the tab bar set up the code in the viewWillAppear method in the UITabBarController. I don't do it in each view controller individually because it works only when the tab bar button is pressed:

override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
    super.viewWillAppear(animated)

    guard let items = tabBar.items else { return }

    items[0].title = "Title0"
    items[1].title = "Title1"
    items[2].title = "Title2"
    items[3].title = "Title3"
}