changing the height of UITabBar in iOS7/8?

Question

I am trying to change the height of the stock UITabBar to 44px, similar to Tweetbot\'s tab bar height. I\'ve also seen a few other apps do this as well.

Answer 1

In your UITabBarController

- (void)viewWillLayoutSubviews {
    CGRect tabFrame = self.tabBar.frame;
    tabFrame.size.height = 80;
    tabFrame.origin.y = self.view.frame.size.height - 80;
    self.tabBar.frame = tabFrame; 
}

Answer 2

The developer doesn't own the tabBar, the framework does. It will fight you to make sure that the tabBar stays the same height. If you want to work around this, you can make your own toolbar and add autlayout constraints to its height to force it to stay whatever height you'd like.

Answer 3

It seems everybody says this can't be done easily

In your storyboard give your UITabBar a custom subclass name, then implement the subclass with the following

This tells all views that use the tab bar that it should be a certain height.

@implementation MyTabBar

-(CGSize)sizeThatFits:(CGSize)size
{
    CGSize sizeThatFits = [super sizeThatFits:size];
    sizeThatFits.height = 100;

    return sizeThatFits;
}

@end

Answer 4

In swift it is even simpler than all solutions suggested above by using an extensions to UITabBar, no subclassing necessary:

extension UITabBar {

    override public func sizeThatFits(size: CGSize) -> CGSize {
        super.sizeThatFits(size)
        var sizeThatFits = super.sizeThatFits(size)
        sizeThatFits.height = <Insert your height here>
        return sizeThatFits
    }
}

Answer 5

For Swift 3 and xcode 8

extension UITabBar {
     override open func sizeThatFits(_ size: CGSize) -> CGSize {
     var sizeThatFits = super.sizeThatFits(size)
     sizeThatFits.height = 80 // adjust your size here
     return sizeThatFits
    }
 }

Answer 6

SomeGuy's answer above worked for me. Here's the Swift translation for anyone who may need it. I made the height close to what it seems most popular apps use.

class TabBar: UITabBar {

     override func sizeThatFits(size: CGSize) -> CGSize {
         var sizeThatFits = super.sizeThatFits(size)
         sizeThatFits.height = 38

         return sizeThatFits
     }
}