Well I'm 99% percent positive that you cannot just go and change the background color of a UIButton. Instead you have to go and change the background images yourself which I think is a pain. I'm amazed that I had to do this.
If I'm wrong or if theres a better way without having to set background images please let me know
I assume you're talking about a UIButton with UIButtonTypeRoundedRect?
You can't change the background color of that. When you try changing it's background color you're rather changing the color of the rect the button is drawn on (which is usually clear).
So there are two ways to go. Either you subclass UIButton and overwrite its -drawRect: method or you create images for the different button states (which is perfectly fine to do).
If you set the background images in Interface Builder you should notice that IB doesn't support setting images for all the states the button can have, so I recommend setting the images in code like this:
The last line shows how to set an image for the selected & highlighted state (that's the one IB can't set).
You don't need the selected images (line 4 & 6) if you're button dosn't need a selected state.
add a second target for the UIButton for UIControlEventTouched and change the UIButton background color. Then change it back in the UIControlEventTouchUpInside target;
If you are not wanting to use images, and want it to look exactly like the Rounded Rect style, try this. Just place a UIView over the UIButton, with an identical frame and auto resize mask, set the alpha to 0.3, and set the background to a color. Then use the snippet below to clip the rounded edges off the colored overlay view. Also, uncheck the 'User Interaction Enabled' checkbox in IB on the UIView to allow touch events to cascade down to the UIButton underneath.
One side effect is that your text will also be colorized.
Now, in IB it is possible to change the background color
However, the button is square, and that is not what we want. Create an IBOutlet with a reference to this button and add the following to the viewDidLoad method:
Another possibility (the best and most beautiful imho):
Create a UISegmentedControl with 2 segments in the required background color in Interface Builder. Set the type to 'bar'. Then, change it to having only one segment. Interface builder does not accept one segment so you have to do that programmatically.
Therefore, create an IBOutlet for this button and add this to the viewDidLoad of your view:
For professional and nice looking buttons, you may check this custom button component. You can use it directly in your views and tableviews or modify the source code to make it meet your needs. Hope this helps.
You can also add a CALayer to the button - you can do lots of things with these including a color overlay, this example uses a plain color layer you can also easily graduate the colour. Be aware though added layers obscure those underneath
This isn't as elegant as sub-classing UIButton, however if you just want something quick - what I did was create custom button, then a 1px by 1px image with the colour I'd want the button to be, and set the background of the button to that image for the highlighted state - works for my needs.
I know this was asked a long time ago and now there's a new UIButtonTypeSystem. But newer questions are being marked as duplicates of this question so here's my newer answer in the context of an iOS 7 system button, use the .tintColor property.