Change tab bar item selected color in a storyboard

In Swift, using xcode 7 (and later), you can add the following to your AppDelegate.swift file:

UITabBar.appearance().tintColor = UIColor(red: 255/255.0, green: 255/255.0, blue: 255/255.0, alpha: 1.0)

This is the what the complete method looks like:

func application(application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [NSObject: AnyObject]?) -> Bool {

    // I added this line
    UITabBar.appearance().tintColor = UIColor(red: 255/255.0, green: 255/255.0, blue: 255/255.0, alpha: 1.0)

    return true
}

In the example above my item will be white. The "/255.0" is needed because it expects a value from 0 to 1. For white, I could have just used 1. But for other color you'll probably be using RGB values.

This elegant solution works great on SWIFT 3.0, SWIFT 4.2 and SWIFT 5.1:

On the Storyboard:

1. Select your Tab Bar
2. Set a Runtime Attibute called tintColor for the desired color of the Selected Icon on the tab bar
3. Set a Runtime Attibute called unselectedItemTintColor for the desired color of the Unselected Icon on the tab bar

Edit: Working with Xcode 8/10, for iOS 10/12 and above.

Add Runtime Color attribute named "tintColor" from StoryBoard. This is working(for Xcode 8 and above).

if you want unselected color.. you can add unselectedItemTintColor too.