Can't change search bar tint color to be transparent in iOS 8

Question

Upgraded from Xcode 5 to 6 and now my search bar tint is black.

Tried to change it through storyboard right pane > "Bar Tint" to clear color, but it's still black.

Also tried programmatically:

[self.searchBar setTintColor:[UIColor clearColor]];

Still black :(

Any ideas?

Corium

I think you want to set the barTintColor. – Carola

Do you want the search bar's background to be clear, or the search bar's textfield's background to be clear? – Mercurialize

The search bar background - the orange rectangle around - see below – Corium

Did you see the second part of my answer below, where I make it clear? – Mercurialize

Answer 1

The tintColor property on search bars, much like UINavigationBar, changes the color of the buttons, as well as changes the color of the blinking cursor, not the actual search bar background. What you want to use is the barTintColor property.

searchbar.barTintColor = [UIColor orangeColor];
searchbar.tintColor = [UIColor greenColor];

Produces the following ugly, yet informative, result:

If you want to have a completely transparent search bar, you need to set the background image as well:

searchbar.barTintColor = [UIColor clearColor];
searchbar.backgroundImage = [UIImage new];

EDIT: I would strongly advise against traversing and modifying the subviews of any UIKit object, as has been proposed in other answers. From Apple's documentation:

For complex views declared in UIKit and other system frameworks, any subviews of the view are generally considered private and subject to change at any time. Therefore, you should not attempt to retrieve or modify subviews for these types of system-supplied views. If you do, your code may break during a future system update.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiview/1622614-subviews

Mercurialize

searchbar.barTintColor = [UIColor orangeColor]; made it orange, however when using [UIColor clearColor] it is still black from some strange reason – Corium

See my edit, you need to change the background view. – Mercurialize

For those who are still having issues with this, I actually had to set searchBar.scopeBarBackgroundImage = [UIImage new]; as well. – Brawley

Nicely done - saved me from having to subclass, and I agree that all things being equal it's a bad idea to be removing views as it's impossible to know what the future consequences would be. – Daedal

for me it didn't work. so I put it a uiview under the search bar which has the color I wanted then I make the search bar transparent ( both bar tint and background color ). – Estellestella

Answer 2

I got to change it on iOS 9 using Swift 2.0 this way:

    let image = UIImage()

    searchBar.setBackgroundImage(image, forBarPosition: .Any, barMetrics: .Default)
    searchBar.scopeBarBackgroundImage = image

Brucebrucellosis

Good solution. Important to note, that this solution will only work if the searBar is Translucent. – Sphagnum

Answer 3

On Swift 3:

Setting up the background of the searchBar to an empty image:

    searchBar.setBackgroundImage(image, for: .any, barMetrics: .default)
    searchBar.scopeBarBackgroundImage = image

Emelda

Answer 4

for programmatically change search bar tint color :

    if let textfield = searchBar.value(forKey: "searchField") as? UITextField {
        textfield.textColor = #colorLiteral(red: 0.3921568627, green: 0.3921568627, blue: 0.3921568627, alpha: 1)
        textfield.backgroundColor = #colorLiteral(red: 1, green: 1, blue: 1, alpha: 1)
    }

for storyboard :

Tacky

Answer 5

I've been seeing this problem as well on iOS8 / XCode 6. I did not get the search bar translucent. searchbar.barTintColor or searchbar.tintColor setting to clear color did not help or shows a black searchbar.

The only workaround i found was to set a translucent background png image (alpha=0.0) and setting searchbar.barTintColor to clear color.

Bewhiskered