Changing Tint / Background color of UITabBar

Question

The UINavigationBar and UISearchBar both have a tintColor property that allows you to change the tint color (surprising, I know) of both of those items. I want to do the same thing to the UITabBar in my application, but have found now way to change it from the default black color. Any ideas?

Answer 1

iOS 5 has added some new appearance methods for customising the look of most UI elements.

You can target every instance of a UITabBar in your app by using the appearance proxy.

For iOS 5 + 6:

[[UITabBar appearance] setTintColor:[UIColor redColor]];

For iOS 7 and above, please use the following:

[[UITabBar appearance] setBarTintColor:[UIColor redColor]];

Using the appearance proxy will change any tab bar instance throughout the app. For a specific instance, use one of the new properties on that class:

UIColor *tintColor; // iOS 5+6
UIColor *barTintColor; // iOS 7+
UIColor *selectedImageTintColor;
UIImage *backgroundImage;
UIImage *selectionIndicatorImage;