中文介绍

Note: This is a community fork of eggswift/ESTabBarController with iOS 26 Liquid Glass support. CocoaPods / Swift Package Manager are not provided here to avoid conflicting with the upstream release. Please integrate by downloading the source code.

ESTabBarController is a highly customizable TabBarController component, which is inherited from UITabBarController.

This fork adds iOS 26 layout properties on ESTabBar. Defaults work out of the box:

• designType (default .automatic): .automatic adapts layout by OS version; .old always uses legacy TabBar layout (hides platter and distributes tabs evenly on iOS 26+)
• usesSystemGlassEffect (default true): effective only when designType == .automatic on iOS 26+; true enables system Liquid Glass dual-layer embedding, false hides system buttons and uses full-width ESTabBarItemContainer layout

Default behavior: with no configuration, iOS 26 shows the system glass TabBar; below iOS 26 matches upstream legacy layout.

Why?

In real-world development, we may encounter the situation of customizing the UITabBar. For instance: change font style, add animation, and use bigger items. However it's hard to do with UITabBarItem.

With ESTabBarController, You can easily achieve these！

-	Feature	Description
1	Default style	You can get a system-like style by initializing the TabBar with ESTabBarController directly. UITabBarController style: ESTabBarController default style:
2	Default style with "More" item	If the items are more than the maximum number of displays, there will be a "More" item. UITabBarController with "More": ESTabBarController with "More":
3	Mix UITabBarItem and ESTabBarItem	You can set any item as you want, including UITabBarItem and ESTabBarItem. ESTabBar and UITabBar mixed style: ESTabBar and UITabBar mixed style with "More":
4	UIKit attributes	ESTabBarController is compatible with UITabBarController, UITabBar and UITabBarItem's most API attributes. You can migrate to ESTabBarController without any modification of the origin code. Compatible with UITabBarController's selectedIndex:
5	Any nesting with UINavigationController	Developing withUITabBarController, there are two common ways to handle layers: First : ├── UITabBarController └──── UINavigationController └────── UIViewController └──────── SubviewControllers Second : ├── UINavigationController └──── UITabBarController └────── UIViewController └──────── SubviewControllers In the first case, need to set hidesBottomBarWhenPushed = true when pushing subViews. The second is not. In ESTabBarController, add Container views to UITabBar to be compatible with these two ways。
6	Customizable style	With ESTabBarController, you can： 1. Customize selected item's color and style: 2. Add selecting animation: 3. Customize item's background color: 4. Add highlight animation: 5. Add animation to prompt users: 6. And much more ...
7	Customizable item's size Customizable click event	You can easily customize item's size using ESTabBarController. When the button's frame is larger than TabBar, HitTest makes the outer TabBar area click valid. In addition, ESTabBarController can customize click event, and through a block to callback super-layer to handle. With big item in the middle of TabBar: With a special hint style: Customize click event:
8	Default notification style	You can get a system-like notification style by initializing the TabBar with ESTabBarController directly. UITabBarController notification style: ESTabBarController system-like notification style:
9	Customizable notification style	With ESTabBarController, you can： 1. Customize notification animation: 2. Customize prompt style: 3. And much more ...
10	Lottie	Through customizing ContentView, you are able to add Lottie's LAAnimationView to Item(s)
11	iOS 26 Liquid Glass	iOS 26 introduces Liquid Glass on the system TabBar. ESTabBarController adapts via designType and usesSystemGlassEffect (iOS 26+): 1. System glass (default): designType = .automatic, usesSystemGlassEffect = true. Custom items embed into the system _UITabBarPlatterView dual-layer structure, preserving system glass compositing and selection animation. 2. Custom container: designType = .automatic, usesSystemGlassEffect = false. Hides system buttons and lays out ESTabBarItemContainer across the full width for fully custom appearance. 3. Mandatory old design: designType = .old. Always uses legacy layout; on iOS 26+ hides the platter and distributes tabs evenly, matching pre-iOS 26 behavior. 4. System glass + Badge: Badges show on unselected items in glass mode; the selected item hides its badge automatically.

Requirements

• Xcode 8 or later
• iOS 8.0 or later (Liquid Glass requires iOS 26.0+)
• ARC
• Swift 5 or later

Demo

You can download and build ESTabBarControllerExample project, and you will find more examples to use ESTabBarController, and also more examples to customize UITabBar. The Basic section includes the iOS 26 layout modes above.

iOS 26 Liquid Glass

let tabBarController = ESTabBarController()
if let tabBar = tabBarController.tabBar as? ESTabBar {
    // .automatic (default, adapts by OS) or .old (force legacy layout)
    tabBar.designType = .automatic

    // Only when designType == .automatic on iOS 26+
    // true: system glass dual-layer embed (default); false: custom container full-width layout
    tabBar.usesSystemGlassEffect = true
}

Property	Default	Description
designType	.automatic	.old ignores usesSystemGlassEffect and always uses legacy layout
usesSystemGlassEffect	true	Effective only with .automatic on iOS 26+

Usage

This fork supports source download / manual integration only. CocoaPods and Swift Package Manager are intentionally not published.

Download

git clone https://github.com/theNightLight/ESTabBarController.git
cd ESTabBarController
open ESTabBarControllerExample/ESTabBarControllerExample.xcodeproj

Integrate into your project

1. Drag all Swift files from ESTabBarControllerExample/ESTabBarControllerExample/Sources/ into your Xcode target.
2. Use ESTabBarController as your root controller — see the Example project for reference.

For official CocoaPods / SPM from upstream, use eggswift/ESTabBarController.

TODO

1. The Containers' layout is purely based on code，using Autolayout will be better.
2. When there is "More," if edited, problems occur.
3. Partial UITabBarItem attributes are not bridge to ESTabBarItem.
4. The picture of 'More' item in ESTabBarItemMoreContentView is not set into framework, plan to convert it to CGBitmap.

Sponsor

If this project helps you, consider buying me a coffee:

Alipay	WeChat

Acknowledgement

• animated-tab-bar by http://ramotion.com
• Partial pictures in Example are from http://www.iconfont.cn

About

Maintained by haochen. Questions and contributions welcome via Issues and Pull Requests.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2013-2016 eggswift
Copyright (c) 2026 haochen

See LICENSE for the full text.

Original Author

This project is modified based on eggswift/ESTabBarController. Original author: eggswift