How to change the background color of a UIButton while it's highlighted?

Question

At some point in my app I have a highlighted UIButton (for example when a user has his finger on the button) and I need to change the background color while the button is highlighted (so while the finger of the user is still on the button).

I tried the following:

_button.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];

But it is not working. The color remains the same. I tried the same piece of code when the button is not highlighted and it works fine. I also tried calling -setNeedsDisplay after changing the color, it didn't have any effect.

How to force the button to change the background color?

Answer 1

You can override UIButton's setHighlighted method.

Objective-C

- (void)setHighlighted:(BOOL)highlighted {
    [super setHighlighted:highlighted];

    if (highlighted) {
        self.backgroundColor = UIColorFromRGB(0x387038);
    } else {
        self.backgroundColor = UIColorFromRGB(0x5bb75b);
    }
}

Swift 3.0 and Swift 4.1

override open var isHighlighted: Bool {
    didSet {
        backgroundColor = isHighlighted ? UIColor.black : UIColor.white
    }
}