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

I read your question to require (as I do) a programmatic way to set button color. It's a glaring omission from the UIKit, and I couldn't get the undocumented UIGlassButton to work.

I've solved this with a single segment UISegmentedControl, which allows you to set the tintColor:

UISegmentedControl * btn = [[UISegmentedControl alloc] initWithItems:[NSArray arrayWithObject:name]];
btn.momentary = YES;
btn.segmentedControlStyle = UISegmentedControlStyleBar;
btn.tintColor = color;
[btn addTarget:self action:@selector(action:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged];

Note please that the momentary and segmentedControlStyle properties do matter, and that an image can be used instead of a NSString * name.

A stretchable image with end caps works fine if you can use a finite set of canned images, but that doesn't fit the requirement! E.g.,

buttonImage   = [[UIImage imageNamed:@"button.png"] stretchableImageWithLeftCapWidth:26 topCapHeight:16];