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ios5customizationuitabbaruitabbaritem

Customize the More UIBarButtonItem in UITabBar

Since iOS 5 Apple provided an API to customise the UITabBarItems in the UITabBar object. I am refering specifically to the following selector:

setFinishedSelectedImage:withFinishedUnselectedImage:

It all works great for regular buttons but I can't seem to customise the "More" button to match the style of the other ones. This is what I am doing:

tabBarController.viewControllers = tabBarControllerArray;
    tabBarController.moreNavigationController.navigationBar.tintColor = [UIColor blackColor];
    UITabBarItem *more = tabBarController.moreNavigationController.tabBarItem;
     if ([more respondsToSelector:@selector(setFinishedSelectedImage:withFinishedUnselectedImage:)]){
        [more setFinishedSelectedImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"BarIcon-More.png"]
           withFinishedUnselectedImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"BarIcon-More.png"]
         ];
    } else {
        more.image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"BarIcon-More.png"];
    }

The result is as follows, it doesn't pick-up my custom More image.

Inactive more button Ugly active more button

I have seen many hacks to replace the more button but there's got to be a better way of doing this right?

Solution

  • The solution was silly.

    I assumed the UITabBarItems in the moreNavigationController was readonly and it wasn't. So simply doing the following:

    tabBarController.moreNavigationController.tabBarItem = [[UITabBarItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"More" image:[UIImage imageNamed:@"BarIcon-More.png"] tag:0];

    And the same customization code as above works.