Changing the text color of a navigation bar title when "prefersLargeTitles" is set to true

Andy Ibanez picture Andy Ibanez · Jun 18, 2017 · Viewed 12.1k times · Source

I have a requirement in which I have to use a UINavigationBar with a red large title.

Currently, I have the following code:

func prepareNavigationController() {
    let navController = UINavigationController(rootViewController: self)
    navController.navigationBar.prefersLargeTitles = true
    navigationItem.searchController = UISearchController(searchResultsController: nil)
    navigationItem.hidesSearchBarWhenScrolling = false
    navController.navigationBar.titleTextAttributes = [NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor.rawValue: UIColor.red]
}

But it's not actually tinting the title label to red. This is the result:

Ignored title color

But changing prefersLargeTitles to false does the right thing, and my title is red.

navController.navigationBar.prefersLargeTitles = false

Tinted Title

I am not entirely sure if this is a bug since at the time of this writing we are still in the first beta, or if this is intentional behavior, mostly because I haven't any of Apple's apps color the large titles before. Is there any way to actually get the large title to have any color I want?

Answer

assb10yr picture assb10yr · Jul 12, 2017

There is a new UINavigationBar property "largeTitleTextAttribute" that should help with this.

largeTitleTextAttribute

Here is a sample code you can add to your view controllers viewDidLoad method

        navigationController?.navigationBar.largeTitleTextAttributes = [NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor: UIColor.blue]

enter image description here

Here is a sample code and screenshot without the largeTitleTextAttributes set, but the barStyle is set to .black

        navigationController?.navigationBar.barStyle = .black

enter image description here

Here is a screenshot without the largeTitleTextAttributes set, but the barStyle is set to .default

        navigationController?.navigationBar.barStyle = .default

enter image description here