How to prevent UIButton from flashing when updating the title

When I call setTitle on a UIButton, the button flashes in iOS 7. I tried setting myButton.highlighted = NO, but that didn't stop the button from flashing.

[myButton setTitle:[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] stringForKey:@"elapsedLabelKey"] forState:UIControlStateNormal];

myButton.highlighted = NO;

Here is how I set up the timer that updated the titles:

- (void)actionTimer {
    if (myTimer == nil) {

        myTimer = [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval: 1.0
                        target: self
                        selector: @selector(showActivity)
                        userInfo: nil
                        repeats: YES];
    }
}

Here is the method that actually updates the titles:

- (void)showActivity {

    NSString *sym = [[NSLocale currentLocale] objectForKey:NSLocaleCurrencySymbol];

    if (pauseInterval == nil) {

        // Update clock
        seconds = [[NSDate date] timeIntervalSinceDate:startInterval] - breakTime;

        // Update total earned
        secRate = rate.value / 60 / 60;
        total = secRate * seconds;
        [totalLabel setTitle:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%.4f",sym,total] forState:UIControlStateNormal];

        days = seconds / (60 * 60 * 24);
        seconds -= days * (60 * 60 * 24);
        int hours = seconds / (60 * 60);
        fhours = (float)seconds / (60.0 * 60.0);
        seconds -= hours * (60 * 60);
        int minutes = seconds / 60;
        seconds -= minutes * 60;

        // Update the timer clock
        [elapsed setTitle:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%.2i:%.2i:%.2i:%.2i",days,hours,minutes,seconds] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
    }
}

Set the button type to UIButtonTypeCustom and it'll stop flashing

A better approach than [UIView setAnimationsEnabled:NO] which may affect other animations is to only disable the specific title animation.

Objective-C:

[UIView performWithoutAnimation:^{
  [myButton setTitle:text forState:UIControlStateNormal];
  [myButton layoutIfNeeded];
}];

Swift:

UIView.performWithoutAnimation { 
    myButton.setTitle(text, for: .normal)
    myButton.layoutIfNeeded()
}

**Please note **

when "buttonType" of _button is "UIButtonTypeSystem", below code is invalid：

[UIView setAnimationsEnabled:NO];
[_button setTitle:@"title" forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[UIView setAnimationsEnabled:YES];

when "buttonType" of _button is "UIButtonTypeCustom", above code is valid.

See the responses from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18946490/how-to-stop-unwanted-uibutton-animation-on-title-change :

[UIView setAnimationsEnabled:NO];
[elapsed setTitle:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%.2i:%.2i:%.2i:%.2i",days,hours,minutes,seconds] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[UIView setAnimationsEnabled:YES];

You can simply just make another function for UIButton for easy future usage.

extension UIButton {
    func setTitleWithoutAnimation(_ title: String?, for controlState: UIControlState) {
        UIView.performWithoutAnimation {
            self.setTitle(title, for: controlState)
            self.layoutIfNeeded()
        }
    }
}

That is it!

And just set the title as you would before but replace setTitle with setTitleWithoutAnimation

Default "setTitle" behavior is definitely hateful!

My solution is:

[UIView setAnimationsEnabled:NO];
[_button layoutIfNeeded]; 
[_button setTitle:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"what" forState:UIControlStateNormal];
[UIView setAnimationsEnabled:YES];

Also, in storyboard, under button's property I uncheck:

• Reverses On Highlight
• Highlighted Adjust Image

And check:

• Disabled Adjust Image

Tested and working on iOS 8 too.

Update - Swift

I suggest you to create your custom button and override setTitle method.

class UnflashingButton: UIButton {
   
    override func setTitle(title: String?, forState state: UIControlState) {
        UIView.setAnimationsEnabled(false)
        self.layoutIfNeeded()
        super.setTitle(title, forState: state)
        UIView.setAnimationsEnabled(true)
    }

}

Try this, this works in newer versions of IOS:

class CustomButtonWithNoEffect : UIButton {
    override func setTitle(_ title: String?, for state: UIControlState) {
        UIView.performWithoutAnimation {
            super.setTitle(title, for: state)
            super.layoutIfNeeded()
        }
    }

}

I'm new to coding and Stackoverflow, so don't have enough reputation to comment directly to expand on https://stackoverflow.com/users/4673064/daniel-tseng excellent answer. So I have to write my own new answer, and it is this:

extension UIButton {
    func setTitleWithoutAnimation(_ title: String?, for controlState: UIControlState) {
        UIView.performWithoutAnimation {
            self.setTitle(title, for: controlState)
            self.layoutIfNeeded()
        }
    }
}

Works great, EXCEPT:

If all my calls later on in the code to "setTitleWithoutAnimation" do not specify a sender, then I get these weird messages related to CoreMedia or CoreData, e.g., "Failed to inherit CoreMedia permissions from 2526: (null)"

This is probably pretty basic to coding and iOS, but for me as a new coder, it sent me on a rabbit trail for a while, as in: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26091463/today-extension-failed-to-inherit-coremedia-permissions-from, where people had interesting answers but that did NOT reach the root of my problem.

So I finally found that I had to go through and give my parameter-less functions parameters, i.e., I had to specify a sender. That sender could be UIButton, Any, or AnyObject. All of those worked, but ultimately there appears to be a conflict between adding a button extension with "self" and not specifically saying later on that a button is using it.

Again, probably basic, but new to me, so I figured it would be worth sharing.

Another trick

@IBOutlet private weak var button: UIButton! {
    didSet {
        button.setTitle(title, for: .normal)
    }
}

This works only if you know the value of the title without making any API calls. The button's title will be set before the view is loaded so you won't see the animation