Removing the title text of an iOS UIBarButtonItem

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What I wanted to do is to remove the text from the ‘Back’ button of a UIBarButtonItem, leaving only the blue chevron on the navigation bar. Keep in mind that I’m developing for iOS 7. I’ve tried several methods, including, but not limited to:

This is the image method which I did not like (the image looked out of place):

UIBarButtonItem *barBtnItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc]initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"iOS7BackButton"] style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain target:self action:@selector(goToPrevious:)];
self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = barBtnItem;

Another method I tried was this, which simply did not work (nothing was displayed):

UIBarButtonItem *barBtn = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc]init];
barBtn.title=@"";
self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem=barBtn;

What I wanted to achieve is something like the back buttons found in the iOS 7 Music app, which only featured a single chevron.

Thanks.

39 Answers
39

To set the back button title for a view controller without changing its title use:

Objective-C:

self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"" style:self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem.style target:nil action:nil];

Swift:

navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = UIBarButtonItem(title: "", style: .plain, target: nil, action: nil)

To be clear, this is done on the view controller that you would see if you hit the back button. i.e. instead of seeing ‘< Settings’ you want to just see ‘<‘ then on your SettingsViewController you would put this in your init. Then you don’t get any of the problems of the title not showing when you’re looking at the view controller itself.

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