How can I set a button background color on iPhone?

Question

How can I set a custom background color of a button?

Interface Builder doesn\'t seem to have an interface to do this.

Is it only available programmatically

Answer 1

http://github.com/dermdaly/ButtonMaker

You can generate UIbutton image using this application...and can set it as background image of your button

Answer 2

I solved this problem by creating my own button in Fireworks. I drew a rounded rectangle of about the size I wanted, with the fill color and border color I wanted. Trim the canvas, and save as a PNG. In XCode, add the file to the Resources folder. You can use a Custom button in Interface Builder and specify the image as that PNG. It will resize it as needed, put the text on top, etc. The curve of the corners may distort if you have to resize it much from the original.

Answer 3

Tim James' solution (a single-segment segmented control) worked for me when I wanted a simple 'Save' button with a decent blue gradient background. I simply created a 2 segment control in the nib, set up the first segment as I wanted it and then programatically removed the second segment under -viewWillAppear using [mySegmentedControl removeSegmentAtIndex:1 animated:NO]. For my purposes 'Momentary' needed to be active (ticked) for the Segmented Control's first segment in the nib and 'Selected' was not active for either segment. 'Value Changed' is the Segmented Control's Action to connect up.

Answer 4

keremk was right when he said to change the 'view' background color when you have clicked on the button and gone into the inspector. This changes the little corners into whatever colour you picked.

Answer 5

So, I found an incredibly simple solution using categories. (So simple that I think I must be doing something hacky, but I don't see it!)

Define a category (if you don't know what that is, in summary: it is a way to "extend" a class minimally; that is, to add methods to a class but no properties) for UIButton, and create a method "setBackgroundColor" that calls UIButton's super class' (UIControl) setBackgroundColor method.

@implementation UIButton (coloredBackgroundButton)

-(void)setBackgroundColor:(UIColor *)backgroundColor {
    [super setBackgroundColor:backgroundColor];
}

Wherever you use UIButtons, as long as you import the header file in which this category is declared, in this case,

#import "coloredBackgroundButton.h" 

you can call setBackgroundColor on them.

Answer 6

I found that I needed to use a stretchable image to accomplish this. Apple's UICatalog example has one or more colored buttons that are drawn in this fashion. You could use their template image and recolor it to suit your button needs.

I'm not sure about doing this in Interface Builder, but I was able to create a button and use an image for its contents using the following code:

downloadButton = [[UIButton alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(36, 212, 247, 37)];

downloadButton.contentVerticalAlignment = UIControlContentVerticalAlignmentCenter;
downloadButton.contentHorizontalAlignment = UIControlContentHorizontalAlignmentCenter;

[downloadButton setTitle:NSLocalizedStringFromTable(@"Download", @"Localized", nil) forState:UIControlStateNormal]; 
[downloadButton setTitleColor:[UIColor whiteColor] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[downloadButton setFont:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:14.0]];

UIImage *newImage = [[UIImage imageNamed:@"greenButton.png"] stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth:12.0f topCapHeight:0.0f];
[downloadButton setBackgroundImage:newImage forState:UIControlStateNormal];

[downloadButton addTarget:self action:@selector(downloadNewItem) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchDown];

downloadButton.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
[downloadDisplayView addSubview:downloadButton];