How to set the tabs in a UITabBarController

Swift version: 5.0

Paul Hudson    @twostraws    May 28th 2019

If you're creating your tab bar controller from scratch, or if you just want to change the set up of your tabs at runtime, you can do so just by setting the viewControllers property of your tab bar controller. This expects to be given an array of view controllers in the order you want them displayed, and you should already have configured each view controller to have its own UITabBarItem with a title and icon.

If your tab bar controller is the root view controller of your window, you should be able to write something like this:

if let tabBarController = window?.rootViewController as? UITabBarController {
    let first = FirstViewController()
    let second = SecondViewController()

    tabBarController.viewControllers = [first, second]
}

Available from iOS 2.0 – see Hacking with Swift tutorial 7

Did this solution work for you? Please pass it on!

Tweet

Other people are reading…

• How to check whether users have enabled the reduced motion setting
• How to center a view in its container
• What does the message "Simulator user has requested new graphics quality: 100" mean?
• How to share content with UIActivityViewController
• What’s the difference between frame and bounds?

About the Swift Knowledge Base

This is part of the Swift Knowledge Base, a free, searchable collection of solutions for common iOS questions.