iOS 18 per item badge color on UITabBar

Question

Up to Xcode 15 and iOS 17, it was easy to change the tab bar item badge color in UIKit using this kind of code:

private func setupBadgeColors(item: UITabBarItem?, backgroundColor: UIColor, textColor: UIColor) {
    guard let item
    else { return }

    item.badgeColor = backgroundColor
    item.setBadgeTextAttributes([.foregroundColor: textColor], for: .normal)
}

Unfortunately this is not effective anymore with Xcode 16 and iOS 18.

I can change the aspect of all the badges of the tab bar, using the badgeBackgroundColor and badgeTextAttribute of a UITabBarItemStateAppearance within a UITabBarItemApperance of a UITabBarAppearance.

I can even customize the appearance of all the badges according to the selected item by updating the specific UITabBarAppearance of each item.

Unfortunately I wish to find a way to customize the badge of each item specifically.

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

Pretty sure this is an Apple bug with the new tab bar. If you split screen your app into a compact layout, the old tab bar appears and the attributes work as expected.

Another semi-related issue is the badge clips if it's the last item in the tab bar.

I submitted a Feedback Assistant ticket for the two issues.