How to add multiple UIBarButtonItem to a navigation bar using rightBarButtonItems

Swift version: 5.10

Paul Hudson @twostraws May 28th 2019

The navigationItem property of your view controller has two properties responsible for displaying multiple bar button items on either side of UINavigationBar: leftBarButtonItems for the left-hand side and rightBarButtonItems for the right-hand side. These are not to be confused with leftBarButtonItem and rightBarButtonItem, which are older properties designed to store single items.

One confusion when working with arrays of bar button items is the order in which they are displayed: they fill from the outside in. So, when using leftBarButtonItems they appear in the order of your array, and when using rightBarButtonItems they appear in reverse order.

For example, here’s some code to display a share button and an add button on the right-hand side of the navigation bar, and the add button will be on the right of the share button:

let share = UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .action, target: self, action: #selector(shareTapped))
let add = UIBarButtonItem(barButtonSystemItem: .add, target: self, action: #selector(addTapped))
navigationItem.rightBarButtonItems = [add, share]