Question

I’m surprised that not “more” has been asked about this 🙂

My app is a standard tab bar controller with multiple sections. Each section (tab) contains a navigation controller that controls a couple of view controllers (your basic tableview + detailview type of setup). Now that I’ve added a 6th tab, iOS creates the default “More” tab that controls the final two tabs. I need to eliminate the “More” text in the middle of the navigation bar (Note: Not the button text, nor the title of the tab itself), and apply a custom background image to the navigation bar.

Note: This question is about customizing the “More” navigation bar – I’ve successfully modified the background image and titleView text on all of the non-iOS created navigation bars.

In my app delegate, the app is put together thusly:

Create View Controllers:

ViewController1 *vc1 = [ViewController1 alloc] initWithNibName@"View1" bundle:nil];
vc1.title = @"VC1";
vc1.tabBarImage.image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"image1.png"];

Repeat the above routine 5 more times for view controllers vc2 through vc6.

Create the individual navigation controllers:

UINavigationController *nc1 = [UINavigationController alloc] initWithRootViewController:vc1];

Repeat 5 more times for nav controllers nc2 – nc6.

Add Nav Controllers to Tab Bar Controller

self.tabBarController.viewControllers = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: vc1, vc2, vc3, vc4, vc5, vc6, nil];

All of the code above works perfectly. No issues.

I then add a custom background image to the More navigation controller thusly:

    if (self.tabBarController.moreNavigationController){
        if ([self.tabBarController.moreNavigationController.navigationBar respondsToSelector:@selector(setBackgroundImage:forBarMetrics:)] ) {
            UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"navlogo.png"];
            [self.tabBarController.moreNavigationController.navigationBar setBackgroundImage:image forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];
        } else {
            UINavigationBar *navbar = self.tabBarController.moreNavigationController.navigationBar;
            UIImage *headerImg = [UIImage imageNamed:@"navlogo.png"];
            [navbar setBackgroundImage:headerImg forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];
        }       
    }

This too works just fine. No issues

Since my custom background contains the client’s logo dead center, I need to remove the text of the titleView that by default reads “More”. Note, I’m not talking about the text of the Navigation BUTTON, but the label in the middle of the navigation bar.

Logically, one would assume that this would work:

    UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] init];
    label.text = @"";
    self.tabBarController.moreNavigationController.navigationItem.titleView = label;

…because I do this in all of individual view controllers, substituting self.navigationItem.titleView for self.tabBarController.moreNavigationController, etc.

But this doesn’t work! I can successfully change both the background image and the titleView text on all of my navigation controllers with this exact same code (again, substituting self.navigationController.navigationItem for the moreNavController stuff…). However, in the app delegate, I can only set the background image, but not the titleView of the More nav controller.

Any solutions would be greatly appreciated.

VB

Answer 1

Turns out, my original code was correct, just in the wrong place.

UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] init];
label.text = @"";
self.tabBarController.moreNavigationController.navigationBar.topItem.titleView = label;

However, I was previously executing this before I added the tabBarController as my rootViewController

The correct order is:

self.window.rootViewController = self.tabBarController;

UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] init];
label.text = @"";
self.tabBarController.moreNavigationController.navigationBar.topItem.titleView = label;