Get the right color in iOS7 translucent navigation bar

Question

How can I get the right coloring for my translucent navigation bars in iOS 7? The navigation bar just adjusts the given color to a much brighter one. Changing brightness or

Answer 1

Simple/fast solution that worked for me. Just set the bar tint in the storyboard rather than the background.

First select your Navigation Bar in your Navigation Controller

And then click the attributes inspector on the right and then set the Bar Tint

You can select a pre-defined color or click on the color to set it to something else.

Answer 2

You simply need to change translucent property

navigationBar.translucent = NO;

It is effectively the same as removing/making transparent subviews/sublayers of the navigation bar.

Answer 3

If your color isn't exceptionally vivid, you can calculate the equivalent color w/ alpha. This works well in iOS 7.0.3+; prior to 7.0.3 it automatically applied a 0.5 alpha.

This code assumes that your input color is RGB and is opaque, and that your background color is white:

- (UIColor *) colorByInterpolatingForBarTintWithMinimumAlpha: (CGFloat) alpha
{
    NSAssert(self.canProvideRGBComponents, @"Self must be a RGB color to use arithmatic operations");
    NSAssert(self.alpha == 1, @"Self must be an opaque RGB color");

    CGFloat r, g, b, a;
    if (![self getRed:&r green:&g blue:&b alpha:&a]) return nil;

    CGFloat r2,g2,b2,a2;
    r2 = g2 = b2 = a2 = 1;

    CGFloat red,green,blue;

    alpha -= 0.01;
    do {
        alpha += 0.01;
        red = (r - r2 + r2 * alpha) / alpha;
        green = (g - g2 + g2 * alpha) / alpha;
        blue = (b - b2 + b2 * alpha) / alpha;
    } while (alpha < 1 && (red < 0 || green < 0 || blue < 0 || red > 1 || green > 1 || blue > 1));

    UIColor *new = [UIColor colorWithRed:red green:green blue:blue alpha:alpha];
    return new;
}

If anyone has a more elegant way of calculating the alpha (I'm cringing at that do-while loop) I'd love to see it: https://gist.github.com/sgtsquiggs/7206385

Answer 4

This should work:

UIColor *barColour = [UIColor colorWithRed:0.13f green:0.14f blue:0.15f alpha:1.00f];

UIView *colourView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.f, -20.f, 320.f, 64.f)];
colourView.opaque = NO;
colourView.alpha = .7f;
colourView.backgroundColor = barColour;

self.navigationBar.barTintColor = barColour;

[self.navigationBar.layer insertSublayer:colourView.layer atIndex:1];

Taken from here

Answer 5

Here is another way to get right color of translucent navigation bar in iOS 7.x and later. For some colors it's possible to find the optimal bar tint color that makes translucent bar to appear with color that matches the desired one.

For example, for Facebook color that is rgb: 65,96,156 or #41609c the optimal color is #21458c. The following code set all navigation bars in the app to be of Facebook color with native cocoa-touch API only:

UIColor* barColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:0.129995 green:0.273324 blue:0.549711 alpha:1.0]; // #21458c to make bars actual color match the #41609c color.
[[UINavigationBar appearance] setBarTintColor:barColor];

The only limitation of the method is that optimized color can't be found for every possible color. Usually this is not possible for dark colors.

I made an BarTintColorOptimizer utility that should be run on the device to search for optimized bar color for any color you enter.

Answer 6

To make tint color look darker you can change the backgroundColor of the navigation bar:

UIColor *color1 = [UIColor colorWithRed:55.0f/256.0f green:0.0f blue:1.0f alpha:1.0f];
[navBar setBarStyle:UIBarStyleBlackTranslucent];
[navBar setBarTintColor:color1];
UIColor *color2 = [UIColor colorWithWhite:0 alpha:0.3];
[navBar setBackgroundColor:color2];

Try playing around with color1 and color2 to achieve the result that fits to you. Anything else would be fighting the framework.