Using the Story Board:

Select the tab bar item from the corresponding view controller and go to the attributes inspector

If you want a built-in icon and title, set the ‘System Item’ to the corresponding value.

For a custom icon, add the required images to the assets folder and set the ‘System Item’ from earlier to ‘custom’.

Now, set the icon to be shown when the tab is selected from the ‘selected image’ drop down and the default tab icon from the ‘image’ drop down. Add the corresponding title in the ‘title’ field.

Programmatically:

In the viewDidLoad() method of the view controller, add the following code:

Objective-C:

self.title = @"item";

self.tabBarItem.image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"item"];
self.tabBarItem.selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"item_selected"];

Swift:

self.title = "item"
self.tabBarItem.image = UIImage(named: "item")
self.tabBarItem.selectedImage = UIImage(named: "item_selected")