ios - Custom tab bar icon colors

Question

Im currently using Xcode 5 to develop a list oriented app. I have a custom tint for the tab bar, custom images for the tab icons, custom tint for the tab bar's icon images when its selected, but i cannot find how to customize the icon images' tint for when its not selected. Right now its just the default gray which you can barely see in contrast to my green tab bar. I want to make the tab bar icons' images and names white.

Does anybody know how to set the tab bar icons' image tint in Xcode 5?

Answer 1

You need to set the rendering mode for each tab's (unselected) image to UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal. So, in your app delegate, get a reference to the tab bar and then iterate over each tab bar item, adjusting the image modes.

There's probably a better way to get a reference to the tab bar, but I did the following:

UIStoryboard *sb = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"Main" bundle:nil];
UITabBarController *tbc = [sb instantiateInitialViewController];
self.window.rootViewController = tbc;
UITabBar *tb = tbc.tabBar;

Then the image adjustment can be done as follows:

NSArray *items = tb.items;

for (UITabBarItem *tbi in items) {
    UIImage *image = tbi.image;
    tbi.selectedImage = image;
    tbi.image = [image imageWithRenderingMode:UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal];
}