CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosswiftcolorscontrols
Sergio B.
Sergio B.

Reputation: 998

iOS 11.x system colors

I've read a lot of posts on how to customize Views colors, but nothing about retrieving system colors for standard controls like the Navigation Bar, Status Bar and Tab Bar in iOS 11.x or previous. The class UIColor has 3 system colors but they are pretty useless. Calling UINavigationBar.appearance(), for example, is of little help because it'll probably return the "clear" color for the default light color scheme, in case nothing has been defined in the application plist. So why doesn't Apple supply a way to programmatically get the system colors as others do (for Windows and Android) ? Has anybody any idea where to find them ? Tx in advance.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 10814

Answers (2)

nathangitter
nathangitter

Reputation: 9777

Update for 2019

UIColor now provides static properties to get the system colors.

Example:

UIColor.systemBlue

For a full list of system colors, check out the "Standard Colors" page in the UIKit documentation: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uicolor/standard_colors

Old Answer

iOS does not provide a way to access these colors programmatically.

Instead, it's simple enough to add these colors to your own project. If the colors change in a future iOS version (and you want to use those new colors instead), you will need to update your app.

In most cases, this is not an issue since apps define their own colors for branding purposes.

enum SystemColor {

    case red
    case orange
    case yellow
    case green
    case tealBlue
    case blue
    case purple
    case pink

    var uiColor: UIColor {
        switch self {
        case .red:
            return UIColor(red: 255/255, green: 59/255, blue: 48/255, alpha: 1)
        case .orange:
            return UIColor(red: 255/255, green: 149/255, blue: 0/255, alpha: 1)
        case .yellow:
            return UIColor(red: 255/255, green: 204/255, blue: 0/255, alpha: 1)
        case .green:
            return UIColor(red: 76/255, green: 217/255, blue: 100/255, alpha: 1)
        case .tealBlue:
            return UIColor(red: 90/255, green: 200/255, blue: 250/255, alpha: 1)
        case .blue:
            return UIColor(red: 0/255, green: 122/255, blue: 255/255, alpha: 1)
        case .purple:
            return UIColor(red: 88/255, green: 86/255, blue: 214/255, alpha: 1)
        case .pink:
            return UIColor(red: 255/255, green: 45/255, blue: 85/255, alpha: 1)
        }
    }

}

Sample usage:

myView.backgroundColor = SystemColor.blue.uiColor

If you prefer, these colors could also be defined as an extension on UIColor like so:

extension UIColor {
    static let systemBlue = UIColor(red: 0/255, green: 122/255, blue: 255/255, alpha: 1)
    // etc
}

and the usage would look like this:

UIColor.systemBlue

iOS system colors from the hig

Colors in the Human Interface Guidelines

Upvotes: 14

Roman Podymov
Roman Podymov

Reputation: 4521

Since Xcode 11.0 you can use UIColor.systemRed, UIColor.systemGreen, UIColor.systemBlue and other UIColor.system* properties to solve the issue you described.

Upvotes: 3

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