TOSearchBar

TOSearchBar is a basic re-implementation of UISearchBar, Apple’s UI control for performing simple text-based searches. Unlike UISearchBar, TOSearchBar has been designed to be much more easily themed, as well as provide smoother, more native feeling animations.

Features

• A very simple and intuitive API.
• iOS 7 style spring animations when entering and leaving focus.
• Uses IBDesignable to be fully visible/configurable in Interface Builder.
• Provides default themes for both light and dark modes.
• Every internal UI element is exposed for custom theming.
• An extensive delegate object for dynamically controlling its behavior.
• Dynamic images generated at runtime, and recycled amongst all instances.

Installation

TOSearchBar will work with iOS 7 and above. While written in Objective-C, it should easily import into Swift as well.

Manual Installation

Copy the contents of the TOSearchBar folder to your app project.

CocoaPods

pod 'TOSearchBar'

Carthage

Feel free to file a PR. 😃

Why build this?

I’m building a comic reader app that uses a dark theme for a lot of its UI. While I tried very hard to make it work, I ultimately became very frustrated by UISearchBar’s lack of customizability. It’s not possible to change the color of its elements without a lot of hacking, and some of its animations are downright broken. A colleague reasoned that it’s the most broken UI control in iOS and I’m pretty sure he’s right!

As a result, I decided to build this control. It’s not as fully featured as UISearchBar, but I’m sure we can add additional functionality to it as needed. 😃

Credits

TOSearchBar was created by Tim Oliver as a component of iComics.

iPhone 7 Plus device mockup by Pixeden.

License

TOSearchBar is available under the MIT license. Please see the LICENSE file for more information.