How to change the background color of UIStackView?

I tried to change the UIStackView background from clear to white in Storyboard inspector, but when simulating, the background color of the stack view still has a clear color.
How can I change the background color of a UIStackView?

Solution 1:

You can't do this – UIStackView is a non-drawing view, meaning that drawRect() is never called and its background color is ignored. If you desperately want a background color, consider placing the stack view inside another UIView and giving that view a background color.

Reference from HERE.

EDIT:

You can add a subView to UIStackView as mentioned HERE or in this answer (below) and assign a color to it. Check out below extension for that:

extension UIStackView {
    func addBackground(color: UIColor) {
        let subView = UIView(frame: bounds)
        subView.backgroundColor = color
        subView.autoresizingMask = [.flexibleWidth, .flexibleHeight]
        insertSubview(subView, at: 0)
    }
}

And you can use it like:

stackView.addBackground(color: .red)

Solution 2:

I do it like this:

@IBDesignable
class StackView: UIStackView {
   @IBInspectable private var color: UIColor?
    override var backgroundColor: UIColor? {
        get { return color }
        set {
            color = newValue
            self.setNeedsLayout() // EDIT 2017-02-03 thank you @BruceLiu
        }
    }

    private lazy var backgroundLayer: CAShapeLayer = {
        let layer = CAShapeLayer()
        self.layer.insertSublayer(layer, at: 0)
        return layer
    }()
    override func layoutSubviews() {
        super.layoutSubviews()
        backgroundLayer.path = UIBezierPath(rect: self.bounds).cgPath
        backgroundLayer.fillColor = self.backgroundColor?.cgColor
    }
}

Works like a charm

Solution 3:

UIStackView is a non-rendering element, and as such, it does not get drawn on the screen. This means that changing backgroundColor essentially does nothing. If you want to change the background color, just add a UIView to it as a subview (that is not arranged) like below:

extension UIStackView {

    func addBackground(color: UIColor) {
        let subview = UIView(frame: bounds)
        subview.backgroundColor = color
        subview.autoresizingMask = [.flexibleWidth, .flexibleHeight]
        insertSubview(subview, at: 0)
    }

}

Solution 4:

Maybe the easiest, more readable and less hacky way would be to embed the UIStackView into a UIView and set the background color to the view.

And don't forget to configure properly the Auto Layout constraints between those two views… ;-)