UITabBar MoreViewController image in UITableView disappears after programmatically selecting it

Question

I'm trying to select one of my UINavigationControllers in the UITabBar.viewControllers array.

I previously tried it with setting the UITabbarController.selectedIndex, but the Apple documentation says: "To select the More navigation controller itself, you must change the value of the selectedViewController property instead."

AppDelegate *appDelegate = (AppDelegate*)[UIApplication sharedApplication].delegate;
UINavigationController *navController = [appDelegate.objTabBarController.viewControllers objectAtIndex:5];
[appDelegate.objTabBarController setSelectedViewController:navController];

Doing so is fine but when I change back to the MoreViewController's list view, the icon on the left side is gone and won't come back.

Everything ok, when selecting it with the finger.

Bug when selecting programmatically -> image is gone

Any suggestions what I'm doing wrong?

Best regards, Steve

Answer 1

Selecting the More Navigation Controller

To select the moreNavigationController, you must set the selectedViewController:

self.tabBarController.selectedViewController = self.tabBarController.moreNavigationController;

The reason for that is simple: The moreNavigationController is not inside the viewControllers of the tab bar controller, so it can't be selected by index.

To select one of the "more" controllers directly, you can either set the selectedViewController property:

self.tabBarController.selectedViewController = viewController5;

Or you can set the selectedIndex:

self.tabBarController.selectedIndex = 5;

Fixing the Disappearing Tab Bar Image

The disappearing tab bar image is caused by using a navigation controller (for the settings) inside a navigation controller (the moreNavigationController generated by the tab bar controller). To fix it, there are two solutions:

1. Don't add navigation controllers for the more section, but add the controllers directly. The controller structure would look like this, assuming the controllers in all tabs need navigation:

   tabBarController
   + navigationController
     + viewController0
   + navigationController
     + viewController1
   + navigationController
     + viewController2
   + navigationController
     + viewController3
   + viewController4
   + viewController5
   

2. Set the tabBarItem of the settings controller on its navigation controller (you only need to do this once):

   UINavigationController *settingsNavigationController = [appDelegate.objTabBarController objectAtIndex:5];
   UIViewController *settingsRootController = settingsNavigationController.viewControllers[0];
   settingsNavigationController.tabBarItem = settingsRootController.tabBarItem;