In Swift (tvOS) how do you change a UIButton's highlight and focus colors?

Question

So I have some buttons that I've added to a view through the Interface Builder and rather than using the system buttons I made them custom. I'm trying to figure out how to change characteristics, such as the text color and background color during different states (highlighted, focused, etc).

It doesn't seem like I can do it through the IB so I'll probably make a subclass of UIButton and change them there, but I'm having trouble finding what properties to change. I don't see them explicitly mentioned in the documentation

Answer 1

You're definitely on the right track!

Once you subclass UIButton, you can override the function didUpdateFocusInContext (from UIFocusEnvironment protocol, which UIButton on tvOS already implements)

override func didUpdateFocusInContext(context: UIFocusUpdateContext, withAnimationCoordinator coordinator: UIFocusAnimationCoordinator) {
    super.didUpdateFocusInContext(context, withAnimationCoordinator: coordinator)

    if context.nextFocusedView == self {
        // This is when the button will be focused
        // You can change the backgroundColor and textColor here
    } else {
        // This is when the focus has left and goes back to default
        // Don't forget to reset the values
    }
}

You can also get fancy and transform the frame to imitate the default "focus" effect!