Change position of UIBarButtonItem in UINavigationBar

Question

How can I change the position of a UIBarButtonItem in a UINavigationBar? I would like my button to be about 5px higher than its normal position.

Answer 1

As @Anomie said, we need to subclass UINavigationBar, and override layoutSubviews().

This will place all right bar button items firmly attached to the right side of the navigation bar (as opposed to being slightly left-adjusted by default):

class AdjustedNavigationBar: UINavigationBar {

    override func layoutSubviews() {
        super.layoutSubviews()

        if let rightItems = topItem?.rightBarButtonItems where rightItems.count > 1 {
            for i in 0..

The only place to set the UINavigationBar property of UINavigationController is in its init(), like so:

let controllerVC = UINavigationController(navigationBarClass: AdjustedNavigationBar.self, toolbarClass: nil)
controllerVC.viewControllers = [UIViewController()]

The second line sets the root view controller of UINavigationController. (Since we cannot set it via init(rootViewController:)