ios - programmatically highlight UIBarButtonItem

Question

after tapping the 'record' BarButtonItem I would like to keep it programmatically highlighted until the recording is over. The highlighting graphics of iOS are very good, therefor I would like to remain or set that state.

Up to now I found 'setSelected' and 'setHighlighted' but these do not work on a UIBarButtonItem. Any suggestions on how to solve this? Thank you in advance, Koen.

Answer 1

setSelected and setHighlighted work fine on UIControls, but not UIBarButtonItems (which are not UIControls).

I'd recommend using UIBarButtonItem's - (void)setBackgroundImage:(UIImage *)backgroundImage forState:(UIControlState)state barMetrics:(UIBarMetrics)barMetrics (documentation linked) method to change the background image to something that mimics highlighting.

You can also set a custom UIView on the item which also mimics highlighting (see the customView property).