ios 11 UITabBar UITabBarItem positioning issue

I have built my app using new Xcode 9 beta for ios 11. I have found an issue with UITabBar where items are spread through the UITabBar and title is right aligned to the image. I have tried changing the code to get it to work but still not successful.

ios 10+

ios 11

I could change the position of title using tabBarItem.titlePositionAdjustment But that is not my requirement as it should automatically come bellow the image itself. I tried setting tabbar.itemPositioning to UITabBarItemPositioningCentered and also tried changing itemSpacing and width, but still did not work. Can someone help me understand why this happens and how to fix this? I want it to like ios 10+ version and images are taken from the left most corner of an iPad.

I am maintaining a large iPad app written mostly in Objective-C that has survived several iOS releases. I ran into the situation where I needed the pre-iOS 11 tab bar appearance (with the icons above the titles instead of next to them) for a couple tab bars. My solution was to create a subclass of UITabBar that overrides the traitCollection method so that it always returns a horizontally-compact trait collection. This causes iOS 11 to display the titles below the icons for all of the tab bar buttons.

In order to use this, set the custom class of the tab bars in the storyboard to this new subclass and change any outlets in the code that point to the tab bars to be of this new type (don't forget to import the header file below).

The .h file is pretty much empty in this case:

//
//  MyTabBar.h
//

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface MyTabBar : UITabBar

@end

Here is the .m file with the implementation of the traitCollection method:

//
//  MyTabBar.m
//

#import "MyTabBar.h"

@implementation MyTabBar

// In iOS 11, UITabBarItem's have the title to the right of the icon in horizontally regular environments
// (i.e. the iPad).  In order to keep the title below the icon, it was necessary to subclass UITabBar and override
// traitCollection to make it horizontally compact.

- (UITraitCollection *)traitCollection {
    return [UITraitCollection traitCollectionWithHorizontalSizeClass:UIUserInterfaceSizeClassCompact];
}

@end

Based on John C's answer, here is the Swift 3 version that can be used programmatically without need for Storyboard or subclassing:

extension UITabBar {
    // Workaround for iOS 11's new UITabBar behavior where on iPad, the UITabBar inside
    // the Master view controller shows the UITabBarItem icon next to the text
    override open var traitCollection: UITraitCollection {
        if UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad {
            return UITraitCollection(horizontalSizeClass: .compact)
        }
        return super.traitCollection
    }
}

To avoid messing up any other traits is it not better to combine with the superclasses:

- (UITraitCollection *)traitCollection
{
  UITraitCollection *curr = [super traitCollection];
  UITraitCollection *compact = [UITraitCollection  traitCollectionWithHorizontalSizeClass:UIUserInterfaceSizeClassCompact];
  
  return [UITraitCollection traitCollectionWithTraitsFromCollections:@[curr, compact]];
}

Swift 4 version with a subclass that avoids extension/category naming collision:

class TabBar: UITabBar {
  override var traitCollection: UITraitCollection {
    guard UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad else {
      return super.traitCollection
    }

    return UITraitCollection(horizontalSizeClass: .compact)
  }
}

If you use Interface Builder and storyboards, you can select the tab bar view in your UITabBarController scene and change its class to TabBar in the Identity Inspector:

NOTE: This fix above seems to work quite nicely. Not sure how it will work in the future, but for now it's working quite well.

---

According to this WWDC talk, this is the new behavior for:

• iPhone in landscape
• iPad all the time

And if I'm reading correctly, this behavior cannot be changed:

> We've got this brand new appearance for the tab bar, both in landscape and on iPad, where we show the icon and the text side by side. And in particular on iPhones the icon is smaller and the tab bar is smaller to give a bit more room vertically.

In Addition to John's answer:

If you have more than 4 Tab Bar Items and don't want the "More" Button you have to take a different Size Class. And if you want the original centred layout of items you have to add another method like so:

#import "PreIOS11TabBarController.h"

@interface PreIOS11TabBarController ()

@end

@implementation PreIOS11TabBarController

// In iOS 11, UITabBarItem's have the title to the right of the icon in horizontally regular environments
// (i.e. the iPad).  In order to keep the title below the icon, it was necessary to subclass UITabBar and override
// traitCollection to make it horizontally compact.

- (UITraitCollection *)traitCollection {
    return [UITraitCollection traitCollectionWithHorizontalSizeClass:UIUserInterfaceSizeClassUnspecified];
}


- (void)viewDidLayoutSubviews {
    [super viewDidLayoutSubviews];
    
    self.tabBar.itemPositioning = UITabBarItemPositioningCentered;
}

@end

@massimobio's answer is good, however it caused the large navigation bar title to disappear for me. Have not investiaged the issue further, but this seems to fix it:

override var traitCollection: UITraitCollection {
        guard UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad else {
            return super.traitCollection
        }
        
        return UITraitCollection(traitsFrom: [super.traitCollection, UITraitCollection(horizontalSizeClass: .compact)])
    }

Max Desiatov's answer works partially. It messes around with the light/dark mode.

Here is another solution which does not interfere with the main traitCollection, but works together.

class CompactTabBar: UITabBar {
    
    override var traitCollection: UITraitCollection {
        guard UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad else {
            return super.traitCollection
        }
        
        let compactTrait = UITraitCollection(horizontalSizeClass: .compact)
        let tabTrait = UITraitCollection(traitsFrom: [super.traitCollection, compactTrait])
        
        return tabTrait
    }
}

Just assign this class to the UITabBar object from the UITabBarController in the UIStoryboard.