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iOS

Posted by Tunde Adegoroye
Tunde Adegoroye
20,597 Points

Tab bar item icons appear darker

When setting the icons for the tab bar items it seems that the icons are appearing darker for some reason. It seems like its using the default tints for the selected and not selected states of the icons. Even though the color of the images are correct.

For information here is the link to the question on stack overflow.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33861411/tab-bar-item-icons-appear-darker

1 Answer

Martin Wildfeuer
PLUS
Martin Wildfeuer
Courses Plus Student 11,071 Points
Martin Wildfeuer
Martin Wildfeuer
Courses Plus Student 11,071 Points

I can see that you already got an answer on stackoverflow, so just let me sum it up here quickly.

The Apple Documentation says the following on UITabBarItem:

By default, the actual selected image is automatically created from the alpha values in the source image. To prevent system coloring, provide images with UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal.

That is, colors provided in the images are ignored by default when set on an UITabBarItem, but rather system defaults are applied. To ensure images are displayed like you intended them to be, provide a standard and selected icon as in the following example:

...
myTab.image = [[UIImage imageNamed:@"iconStandard.png"] imageWithRenderingMode:UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal ];
myTab.selectedImage = [[UIImage imageNamed:@"iconSelected.png"] imageWithRenderingMode:UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal];
...

Also worth a read: The iOS Human Interface Guidelines on tab bar icons.

Tunde Adegoroye
Tunde Adegoroye
20,597 Points

Cheers for explaining and clearing that up mate!