Turn off highlighting on UIBarButtonItem

Question

I'm trying to use a UIBarButtonItem to put a title on my UIToolbar. I'm using the plain style and that looks fine, but I can't seem to get it to stop highlighting on touch. The Shows Touch When Highlighted option isn't available for the bar button items. Is there a quick and easy way to do this? I'm trying to do the building in interface builder so I can see what I'm doing. I'd prefer not to build the toolbar in the view did load every time.

Answer 1

The property responsible for this is accessible in the UIButton class:

myButton.showsTouchWhenHighlighted = NO;

You can access this (programmatically) in a UIBarButtonItem by assigning a UIButton to the bar button item's customView property, and configuring the button. You can do this in Interface Builder too: drag a UIButton onto a UIToolbar, and it will automatically embed it in a UIBarButtonItem for you - then look for the "Shows Touch On Highlight" checkbox under the button's settings.

Incidentally, I don't know how you're customising your buttons so feel free to ignore this, but if your button looks and behaves like a standard toolbar item then users will expect the glow effect.