I have a very simple setup. A UINavigationController with a root UIViewController that modifies its navigation item with a custom back button item on viewDidLoad
.
let backButton = UIBarButtonItem(image: backArrowImage,
style: .plain,
target: nil,
action: nil)
navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = backButton
I'm expecting this to completely replace the system back button with title and the default back arrow icon.
However when I push a new view controller on the stack, the navigation bar draws both the new custom back icon and the system back icon.
This is what I'm seeing:
This is what I would expect it to look like:
The solution was to set global UINavigationBar appearance. Apparently this has to be done at app launch.
UINavigationBar.appearance().backIndicatorImage = backArrowImage
UINavigationBar.appearance().backIndicatorTransitionMaskImage = backArrowImage
With this approach we can preserve title animations and general back button behavior that would not be preserved if supplementing the back button with the leftBarButtonItem
.