How do I style the backBarButtonItem title in a navigation bar? - ios

Question

I'd like to be able to change only the text color of the back button in the navigation bar.
As a work around, I can sort of do what I'm trying to do by creating a custom view and assigning it to navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem, but it doesn't look very good and I also lose the swipe to pop ability.
Code for the above:
let button = UIButton(type: .system)
let originalImage = #imageLiteral(resourceName: "BackButton")
let scaledImage: UIImage = UIImage(cgImage: originalImage.cgImage!, scale: 30, orientation: originalImage.imageOrientation)
button.setImage(scaledImage, for: .normal)
button.setTitle("YourTitle", for: .normal)
button.sizeToFit()
button.setTitleColor(.brown, for: .normal)
button.tintColor = .blue
navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = UIBarButtonItem(customView: button)
I also see things suggested like setting attributes of the back button via
navigationController?.navigationBar.topItem.backBarButtonItem?.setTitleTextAttributes([NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.red], for: .normal)
but that doesn't seem to have any effect on the look of the text, despite
print("Attributes: ", navigationController?.navigationBar.topItem?.backBarButtonItem?.titleTextAttributes(for: .normal) ?? "No attributes")
resulting in Attributes: ["NSColor": UIExtendedSRGBColorSpace 1 0 0 1].
I could set tintColor but that would change the color of the back icon in addition to the title.
So what's the best way to do what I want? Is there a way?

Answer 1

Am not sure whether I understood you correctly. But try the below code. This will apply to all the bar button items of your app. Place this code where it is called only once though out app lifecycle. Like application: didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:
let attribs = [NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.red, NSFontAttributeName: UIFont.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 18)]
UIBarButtonItem.appearance().setTitleTextAttributes(attribs, for: .normal)

Answer 2

I figured it out. You can style the back button by setting self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem in the previous view controller.
For example, in my case I had TableViewController and when you clicked on a cell, the app would transition to ViewController. In TableViewController I had
public func changeColor() {
let barButton = UIBarButtonItem(title: "Anything", style: .plain, target: nil, action: nil)
barButton.setTitleTextAttributes([NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.brown], for: .normal)
self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = barButton
}
and then in ViewController I had
#IBAction func buttonPressed(_ sender: Any) {
let vc = self.navigationController?.viewControllers[0] as! TableViewController
vc.changeColor()
self.title = "hello very long title asdfasdfasfdasdfasdfasdfasdfasdf"
}
As a result, pressing a button in ViewController would change the color of the title of its back button to brown.