How can I create a button with a background color for tvOS while still showing focus?

Question

All I want to do is add a background color to a button for all states. But I want to maintain the automatic focus shadow that you get "for free" when using a system button in the tvOS storyboard. So far I haven't been able to find a combination that allows this.

Alternatively, I would also be interested in a way to programmatically add the shadow when the button is focused, but short of subclassing the button (which I haven't yet tried), I don't know how to do that either.

Answer 1

Override didUpdateFocusInContext method and check if next focus view is button, if yes then customize its UI, and to set it back to orignal state check context.previousFocusedView was that button, something like below

- (void)didUpdateFocusInContext:(UIFocusUpdateContext *)context withAnimationCoordinator:(UIFocusAnimationCoordinator *)coordinator
{
    if (context.nextFocusedView == _button)
    {
        // set background color
    }
    else if (context.previousFocusedView == _button)
    {
        // set background color to background
    }
}