Unselected UITabBar color?

This will not work under iOS 7 as far as I can say. In particular, tintColor of the tab bar will define the color of the selected tab, not of the unselected ones. If you want to change the default in iOS 7, it seems that you have to actually use different icons (in the color you like to have for unselected tabs) and set the color of the text.

This example should tint selected tabs to red and render others in green. Run this code in your TabBarController:

// set color of selected icons and text to red
self.tabBar.tintColor = [UIColor redColor];
[[UITabBarItem appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys: [UIColor redColor], NSForegroundColorAttributeName, nil] forState:UIControlStateSelected];


// set color of unselected text to green
[[UITabBarItem appearance] setTitleTextAttributes:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:[UIColor greenColor], NSForegroundColorAttributeName, nil]
                                         forState:UIControlStateNormal];

// set selected and unselected icons
UITabBarItem *item0 = [self.tabBar.items objectAtIndex:0];

// this way, the icon gets rendered as it is (thus, it needs to be green in this example)
item0.image = [[UIImage imageNamed:@"unselected-icon.png"] imageWithRenderingMode:UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal];

// this icon is used for selected tab and it will get tinted as defined in self.tabBar.tintColor
item0.selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"selected-icon.png"];

If you set the icon in the story board only, you can control the color of the selected tab only (tintColor). All other icons and corresponding text will be drawn in gray.

Maybe someone knows an easier way to adopt the colors under iOS 7?

In iOS 10 and higher, there are 3 possible easy solutions:

A. Instance from code (Swift):

self.tabBar.unselectedItemTintColor = unselectedcolor

B. Instance from IB:

Add a Key Path: unselectedItemTintColor of type: Color

C. Global appearance (Swift):

UITabBar.appearance().unselectedItemTintColor = unselectedcolor