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How to customize a view controller’s back button on a navigation bar: backBarButtonItem

Swift version: 5.6

Paul Hudson    @twostraws   

When you move between view controllers using UINavigationController, it automatically configures a Back button show either “Back” or the title of the previous view controller. That usually works well enough, but if your previous controller has a long title you’ll probably want something custom.

This is where the backBarButtonItem property comes in: set this to an instance of UIBarButtonItem to have UIKit create a back button title of your choosing. You don’t need to provide anything for the target or action parameters of your button, because even with a custom title it’s still just a back button.

Here’s some example code:

navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = UIBarButtonItem(title: "Cancel", style: .plain, target: nil, action: nil)
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Available from iOS 2.0

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