iOS 26 UIBarButtonItems in navigation bar flashing wrong background during push/pop

An iOS app has a UINavigationController with a UINavigationBar that is non-translucent (e.g. black). When performing a push (or pop) to navigate to or from another UIViewController the UIBarButtonItems on the navigation bar are flashing a white background. With a dark navigation bar this is very noticeable and not desirable.

This only occurs when run on iOS 26 and is related to Liquid Glass

I've created FB19660024 with a minimal Xcode workspace to reproduce, along with a video showing the behavior.

This is a cosmetic bug, not affecting functionality, but is a very undesirable effect on apps with dark and non-translucent navigation bars.

Has anyone else seen this and found a workaround?

I had issues with BarButtonItems, as described here. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/787177

Not exactly the same as yours but background issues as well.

This is NOT corrected in Xcode 26 beta 6 / iOS 26 beta 7

I've learned that a combination of two things seems to resolve this issue, or at least soften the effects.

For dark UINavigationBar and UIToolbar backgrounds

  1. set barStyle = .black
  2. don't use UINavigationBarAppearance() to set bar colors, just set navigationBar properties colorBarTint, colorBackground, and isTranslucent = false

I'm closing FB19660024, though something definitely not right here ... for example setting the navigation bar title font and color requires use of UINavigationBarAppearance() and these display glitches recur.

iOS 26 UIBarButtonItems in navigation bar flashing wrong background during push/pop
 
 
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