UIButton titleColor upon selection and highlight

Question

I'm trying to set a UIButton's titleColor to a certain color when it is selected and when it is highlighted, however, I need to set the button to be selected when the user touches down on the UIButton.

I've set it up like so:

[button setTitleColor:normalColor forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[button setTitleColor:superDuperSpecialColor forState:UIControlStateHighlighted];
[button setTitleColor:superDuperSpecialColor forState:UIControlStateSelected];
[button addTarget:self 
           action:@selector(action:) 
 forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchDown];

But when the button gets selected in the action: method using [senderButton setSelected:YES], it sets the titleColor to normalColor, rather than superDuperSpecialColor, which it should be, as it's both highlighted AND selected.

Commenting out the setSelected: call prevents the button from becoming and staying selected and commenting out the highlighted state color doesn't have any effect, it seems.

Will I have to add targets for UIControlEventTouchCancel, UIControlEventTouchUpInside and UIControlEventTouchUpOutside in order to call setSelected: after the highlight ends -or- change the titleColor for UIControlStateNormal to superDuperSpecialColor when the button gets a touch?

On a side note, I would have liked to set the titleColor like so:

[button setTitleColor:superDuperSpecialColor 
             forState:(UIControlStateHighlighted | UIControlStateSelected)];

But that doesn't seem to work. Why is that? Does Objective-C check for state equivalency?

Answer 1

I verified your results, and it seems like a bug in iOS. It fails on both the simulator and the device (iOS 6.1). It seems like if the selected and highlighted states are both YES, then the selected settings should override the highlighted settings. It's mostly implemented that way. The button's text value works like this, but the color seems to get it wrong (defaults to normal).

You might want to try it against iOS 7 if you have the latest XCode to see if they've fixed this, otherwise report it as a bug.

Since selected isn't a commonly used state for a UIButton, it probably wasn't properly tested in combination with other states.

As a workaround, in your action method, you could set the color for the normal state to superDuperSpecialColor and add another action for the touch up events to set the normal color back to normal. Since the state while the button is pressed should never actually be normal, this won't break anything if they do fix it in the future.

Answer 2

I think you need to check your UIButton type, in creation. I have code like this and works fine.

But setting state two states in one line doesn't work for me.

[button setTitleColor:superDuperSpecialColor 
             forState:(UIControlStateHighlighted | UIControlStateSelected)];

Answer 3

For both selected and highlighted state it's also necessary to set title, while for only highlighted state title is taken from normal state. So, don't forget to add extra line:

[button setTitleColor:UIColor.blackColor forState:UIControlStateSelected];
[button setTitleColor:[UIColor.blackColor colorWithAlphaComponent:0.5f]
                 forState:UIControlStateSelected | UIControlStateHighlighted];

[button setTitle:@"Title" forState:UIControlStateSelected];
[button setTitle:@"Title" forState:UIControlStateSelected | UIControlStateHighlighted];

Сode below works fine without explicit setting title for highlighted state:

[button setTitleColor:UIColor.greyColor forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[button setTitleColor:[UIColor.greyColor colorWithAlphaComponent:0.5f]
             forState:UIControlStateHighlighted];

[button setTitle:@"Title" forState:UIControlStateNormal];