UIBarButtonItem shows ? with square when tap on it

Question

All, I used fontawsome icon for UIBarButtonItem. It looks good but when tapping on it changes the icon to "?" with square. See attached images.

Normal :

When on tap :

let searchBtn = UIBarButtonItem(title: String.fontAwesomeIcon(name: .search), style: .plain, target: self, action: #selector(searchAction))
    searchBtn.setTitleTextAttributes([NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor: UIColor.tabTextColor(),NSAttributedString.Key.font: UIFont.fontAwsomeProLight(22)!], for: .normal)
    
    self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = searchBtn

Any idea why it happens?

Answer 1

You've only set the font to be Font Awesome for the .normal control state, but when the button is tapped, its control state changes to .highlighted . You have not set the font for this state, so the system font is used, but that Font Awesome character is not supported by the system font, so you see a question mark.

You should set the font for the highlighted state as well:

searchBtn.setTitleTextAttributes([
    NSAttributedString.Key.font: UIFont.fontAwsomeProLight(22)!
], for: .highlighted)