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iOS: Why is custom tab bar item showing only as grey silhouette?

I am trying to set the tab bar icons of my UITabBarController with custom *.png files (one for the selected and one for unselected).

The images are all in non-interlaced png format and are named correctly (@2x, @3x, etc) residing in an *.imageset.

But the tab bar items are only shown as silhouettes like this:

enter image description here

I tried to set these images within Interface Builder, without success. Then I also tried to set them programmatically in the "loadView" function of MyTabBarController (which is extending UITabBarController) like this:

UIImage *selectedImage;
UIImage *unselectedImage;

// tab1
selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"cmdGamesActive"];
unselectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"cmdGamesInactive"];
UITabBarItem *item1 = [self.tabBar.items objectAtIndex:0];
item1 = [item1 initWithTitle:@"Games" image:unselectedImage selectedImage:selectedImage];

// tab2
selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"cmdFriendsActive"];
unselectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"cmdFriendsInactive"];
UITabBarItem *item2 = [self.tabBar.items objectAtIndex:1];
item2 = [item2 initWithTitle:@"Friends" image:unselectedImage selectedImage:selectedImage];

// tab3
selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"cmdTrophiesActive"];
unselectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"cmdTrophiesInactive"];
UITabBarItem *item3 = [self.tabBar.items objectAtIndex:2];
item3 = [item3 initWithTitle:@"Trophies" image:unselectedImage selectedImage:selectedImage];

// tab4
selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"cmdSettingsActive"];
unselectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"cmdSettingsInactive"];
UITabBarItem *item4 = [self.tabBar.items objectAtIndex:3];
item4 = [item4 initWithTitle:@"Settings" image:unselectedImage selectedImage:selectedImage];

... with the same result.

Any ideas how to solve this issue ?

Solution

  • According to this answer, I did something extra and kind of have answer for you here. I have my custom UITabBarController, which is linked with my UITabBarController in the StoryBoard file. So in order to remove the automatic tint provided by iOS when the TabBar is unselected, I ended up removing it in this manner. The images can be a vast variety of images but just in the way recommended here. Here it goes:

    NSArray *navConArr = self.viewControllers;//self is custom UITabBarController
UINavigationController *naviOne = [navConArr objectAtIndex:0];//I have 3 different tabs, objectAtIndex:0 means the first tab navigation controller
UITabBarItem *naviBtn  = naviOne.tabBarItem;
UIImage *image = [[UIImage imageNamed:@"iconNaviOne"] imageWithRenderingMode:UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal];
[naviBtn setSelectedImage:image];
[naviBtn setImage:image];

    Thankfully, this works like a charm (: