titleTextAttributes UIAppearance font in iOS 7

Question

I am using UIAppearance to apply fonts to UINavigationBar and UIBarButtonItem and I am having problems. I ran this code:

[[UIBarButtonItem appearanceWhenContainedIn:[UIToolbar class], nil] 
setTitleTextAttributes:
@{NSFontAttributeName : [UIFont fontWithName:@"My_Font" size:17.0]} 
forState:UIControlStateNormal];

NSLog(@"%@", [[UIBarButtonItem appearanceWhenContainedIn:
[UIToolbar class], nil] titleTextAttributesForState:UIControlStateNormal]);

and the result of that log on iOS 7 is:

(null)

Where the result in iOS 6 is:

{
    NSFont = "<UICFFont: 0x1d897a80> font-family: \"My_Font\"; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-size: 17px";
}

I can't find anything in the iOS 7 docs that would indicate that this shouldn't work, has anyone else had this problem?

Edit 1

I actually have gotten this to work with [UINavigationBar appearance] the problem was that I was setting the point size to 0 in order to have the font be set to the default navbar/barButtonItem size as described in the NSString UIKit Additions Reference but this apparently no longer works in iOS 7. Instead, setting the point size to 0 will return the system font.

I am still unable to set titleTextAttributes to

[UIBarButtonItem appearanceWhenContaintedIn:[UIToolbar class], nil]]

Answer 1

Following @Alex Zavatone's answer - it could be done nicely in just one line of code:

self.navBar.titleTextAttributes = @{
    NSFontAttributeName: [UIFont fontWithName:@"HelveticaNeue-Light" size:20.0], 
    NSForegroundColorAttributeName: [UIColor redColor]
};

Answer 2

NSDictionary *attributes = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:[UIFont 
    fontWithName:@"YOURFONT" size:14], NSFontAttributeName, 
    [UIColor whiteColor], NSForegroundColorAttributeName, nil];

[[UINavigationBar appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:attributes];

The key is to use NSFontAttributeName and so forth. I assume they are moving over to using the NS variety for 64-bit compatibility. The above code worked on my iOS7 device.

Answer 3

Here it is in Swift:

let font = UIFont(name: "My_Font", size: 17.0)
UINavigationBar.appearance().titleTextAttributes = [
    NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.whiteColor(),
    NSFontAttributeName: font!
]

*Note that you have to unwrap the optional UIFont.

Answer 4

For the UIBarButons use the appearance proxy:

 NSDictionary *normalAttributes = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
                                      [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica Neue" size:fontSize], UITextAttributeFont,
                                      nil];
    [[UIBarButtonItem appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:normalAttributes                                                                                                   
                                                forState:UIControlStateNormal];

If you want to limit which UIBarButtonItems your style affects use appearanceWhenContainedIn: instead.

For the UINavigationBar, you can create a UILabel and set it to your navigationItem.titleView:

UIabel *title = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero];
title.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
title.font = [*yourfont*];
title.textColor = [*your color*];
self.navigationItem.titleView = title;

Answer 5

Here is how to globally change the nav bar title's text color in Swift 4:

UINavigationBar.appearance().titleTextAttributes = [NSAttributedStringKey.foregroundColor.rawValue: UIColor.yellow]

Answer 6

Here's what I do on iOS-7

UIColor *red = [UIColor colorWithRed:165.0f/255.0f green:1.0f/255.0f blue:0.0f/255.0f alpha:1.0];
UIFont *font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"HelveticaNeue-Light" size:24.0f];

NSMutableDictionary *navBarTextAttributes = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithCapacity:1];
[navBarTextAttributes setObject:font forKey:NSFontAttributeName];
[navBarTextAttributes setObject:red forKey:NSForegroundColorAttributeName ];

self.navBar.titleTextAttributes = navBarTextAttributes;