The following example shows how to apply custom fonts to a Navigation Bar and includes fixes for some quirky behaviors found in Xcode. One also may apply the custom fonts to any other UIControls such as UILabels, UIButtons, and more by using the attributes inspector after the custom font is added to the project. Please note the external links to working samples and videos near the bottom.

  1. Select Your Navigation Bar within your Navigation Controller

http://i.stack.imgur.com/kTgul.png

  1. Change the Title Font in the Attributes Inspector

http://i.stack.imgur.com/FQyiW.png

(You will likely need to toggle the Bar Tint for the Navigation Bar before Xcode picks up the new font)

Notes (Caveats)

Verified that this does work on Xcode 7.1.1+. (See the Samples below)

  1. You do need to toggle the nav bar tint before the font takes effect (seems like a bug in Xcode; you can switch it back to default and font will stick)
  2. If you choose a system font ~ Be sure to make sure the size is not 0.0 (Otherwise the new font will be ignored)

http://i.stack.imgur.com/33nJ9.png

  1. Seems like this works with no problem when only one NavBar is in the view hierarchy. It appears that secondary NavBars in the same stack are ignored. (Note that if you show the master navigation controller’s navBar all the other custom navBar settings are ignored).

Gotchas (deux)

Some of these are repeated which means they are very likely worth noting.

  1. Sometimes the storyboard xml gets corrupt. This requires you to
review the structure in Storyboard as Source Code mode (right click
the storyboard file > Open As ...)
  1. In some cases the navigationItem tag associated with user defined runtime attribute was set as an xml
child of the view tag instead of the view controller tag. If so
remove it from between the <view></view> tags for proper operation.