Fix iOS tab bar background color bug

1. Background
2. How to fix

Background

I sometimes use the color filter accessibility feature to have my screen in grayscale. The colors can be overwhelming, but in monochrome everything is less triggering. After a while I started to notice a change in the bottom tab bar in apps. The currently selected tab had a background applied. In monochrome that is useful to indicate the status, but it also appeared when the color filter is turned off.

Turns out to be both a feature and long standing bug in iOS. The feature to differentiate button types in grayscale is useful. The bug that it remains on and can’t be disabled is not so great.

The buggy feature is called ‘button shapes’. It adds styling to buttons to make them more stand out from other interface elements. Such as underlining the Back button and a background for active tabs.

How to fix

There is no permanent fix because it is a bug in iOS. Only Apple can do something about it.

The only stable method I found is to toggle ‘button shapes’ while color filter is enabled.

1. Go to Settings app
2. Go to Accessibility
3. In the ‘Visual’ section go to ‘Display and text size’
4. Go to Color filters
5. Enable the Color filters toggle
6. Go back and slowly toggle Button shapes with a pause between them: on, off, on, off
7. Go back to Color filters
8. Disable the Color filters toggle