What is tint color in ios

Usually, ui control uses color and background color to define colors used to show the control. But for buttonor other clickable control, it may be helpful to use the same color schema to indicate whether they are clickable or not at the current screen. That is what tint color property is used in iOS UIView and sub controls.

iOS 7 has introduced the tintColor property on UIView . It is used to visually indicate which controls on the screen are active or have an action associated with them. For example, bar button items and tab bar items use tint color by default. If a view control does not have an explicit tint color, it inherits its superview’s tint color, which will indicated by the Default value for the color property shown in the Main Storyboard.

Note the tint color should only applied to the clickable controls when they are enabled, so if the control is disabled,  it should use a different color to show the effect. Button control has a shadow property to do so, but segment control or slide control still show the tint color when they are disabled, it is better to change the color to a different one to give user a better experience. In addition, if a control is not clickable, like a text field, or a title bar, then it should not show with the same color used by the tint color on the screen to avoid confusion.