How to make UIToolbar have a Clear Background?

Question

I have a UIToolbar that has a white tint, with a bar button item, followed by some flexible space, followed by another bar button item. I would like to make the toolbar completely clear so that I can see what is under the flexible space (I don't care about seeing what is behind the buttons). Is there a way to do this? I have tried setting the toolbar to translucent, but that does not make it completely clear.

Answer 1

[self.toolbar setBackgroundImage:[UIImage new]
              forToolbarPosition:UIToolbarPositionAny
                      barMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];

 [self.toolbar setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];

Answer 2

Subclass UIToolbar, and implement the below method:

- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect 
{
  [[UIColor colorWithWhite:0 alpha:0.6f] set]; // or clearColor etc
  CGContextFillRect(UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext(), rect);
}

see more details here

Answer 3

set toolbarStyle -1 like this

 tools.barStyle = -1; // clear background

Answer 4

Hacky, sorry, but the only way I've found so far that reliably works in both iOS 7 and iOS 6 is to do this:

[[toolbar.subviews objectAtIndex:0] removeFromSuperview];

Answer 5

If you want a global solution take advantage of the UIAppearance proxy:

UIToolbar *toolbarAppearance = [UIToolbar appearance]; [toolbarAppearance setBackgroundImage:[[UIImage alloc] init] forToolbarPosition:UIBarPositionAny barMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];

Answer 6

It can be done without subclassing in iOS 6+ with setting the property translucent to `YES.

This will not work in iOS 5 in below. Here's how it can be done without subclassing toolbar:

const float colorMask[6] = {222, 255, 222, 255, 222, 255};
UIImage *img = [[UIImage alloc] init];
UIImage *maskedImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage: CGImageCreateWithMaskingColors(img.CGImage, colorMask)];

[self.toolbar setBackgroundImage:maskedImage forToolbarPosition:UIToolbarPositionAny barMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];

Answer 7

There is a solution in @ievgen answer in Swift 5.1

toolbar.setBackgroundImage(UIImage(), forToolbarPosition: .any, barMetrics: .default)
toolbar.backgroundColor = .clear

If you want to clear the separator gray line

toolbar.setShadowImage(UIImage(), forToolbarPosition: .any)

Answer 8

Swift 3 version of accepted answer:

   self.toolbar.isTranslucent = true
    self.toolbar.setBackgroundImage(UIImage(),
                               forToolbarPosition: UIBarPosition.any,
                               barMetrics: UIBarMetrics.default)

    self.toolbar.setShadowImage(UIImage(), forToolbarPosition: UIBarPosition.any)