How to remove text from a navigation bar back button

08 Apr 2020 ⋅ 3 min read ⋅ UIKit Back Button

Table of Contents

When you push a new view controller into the UINavigationController stack, it automatically presents a back button for you to go back to the previous view controller. Today's tip is all about the back button title.

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Where does the title in the back button coming from?

The title of the back button gives a clue to the previous view controller that is pushing the current view, so the title is coming from the former view controller. This is the key concept when you are trying to edit the back button title.

The back button title is coming from the previous view controller.

Default Back button title behavior

Let's explore some scenarios on the back button title. I will call the first view controller, A, and the one that gets pushed, B.

A view controller with no title

If view A has no title, a back button in view B will show the default string "Back".

A view controller with a title

If view A has a title, a back button in view B will show that title.

Limited space

If there is not enough space to show the full title of view A, the back button will show the default "Back" string. This can happen if title A is too long, or title B is too long, which leaves no space for title A.

How to modify the title

If you want the back button title to be different than the title to fit the limited space or because your designer says so, you can do it in two ways.

Storyboard

Open up your storyboard file and open up Document Outline (Editor > Document Outline).

Click on view controller A's Navigation item
Go to Attributes inspector (⌥ – Option + ⌘ - command + 5 or Menu View > Inspectors > Show Attributes Inspector)
You can edit you back button title from Back Button field

To make the title empty, put one blank space (" ") to the Back Button field.

Set back button title in Attributes Inspector

Programmatically

We have two way to set back button title in code, navigationItem.backBarButtonItem and navigationItem.backButtonTitle.

backBarButtonItem

In view controller A, create a UIBarButtonItem with any title you want and set it to navigationItem.backBarButtonItem.

This will set a back button title to "You back button title here".

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        let backBarButtonItem = UIBarButtonItem(title: "You back button title here", style: .plain, target: nil, action: nil)
        navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = backBarButtonItem
    }
}

To make the title empty, just set the title to nil or an empty string "".

backButtonTitle

You can also set a title with navigationItem.backButtonTitle. But to make an empty back title, you have to set backButtonTitle to "" not nil. Set backButtonTitle to nil would use the navigation title as a back button title.

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        navigationItem.backButtonTitle = ""
    }
}

Custom back button title behavior

There is one behavior different that you should know when overriding the back button title. Unlike the default back button, which will show a default "Back" title when there is not enough space, the title setting this way will take as much space as it wants. The title of view B might not even show.

A view controller with a long back title

Right bar buttons still have higher priority than the back title, so it not got truncate.

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