UIBarButtonItem is disabled, but has normal color

Check with following code.

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];

    UIBarButtonItem * btnTemp = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemDone target:self action:@selector(btnDone_Click:)];
    [btnTemp setTitleTextAttributes:@{NSForegroundColorAttributeName : [UIColor lightGrayColor], NSFontAttributeName:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:16.0f]} forState:UIControlStateNormal];

    [btnTemp setTitleTextAttributes:@{NSForegroundColorAttributeName : [UIColor blueColor], NSFontAttributeName:[UIFont systemFontOfSize:16.0f]} forState:UIControlStateDisabled];

    [self.navigationItem setRightBarButtonItem:btnTemp];

}

- (void)btnDone_Click : (id)sender {

    UIBarButtonItem * button = (UIBarButtonItem *)sender;
    [button setEnabled:FALSE];
    [self performSelector:@selector(enableButton:) withObject:sender afterDelay:2.0f];


}

- (void)enableButton : (id)sender {
    UIBarButtonItem * button = (UIBarButtonItem *)sender;
    [button setEnabled:TRUE];
}

Swift 4

If someone looking for how to change barbuttonitem disabled state appearance in swift. Here you go.

barButtonItem.setTitleTextAttributes([NSAttributedString.Key.foregroundColor: UIColor.lightGray], for: .disabled)

You have likely set the bar button item title text attributes for the .Normal state and need to also set it for the .Disabled state.

There are two ways to fix this, one if you are setting the title text attributes on the bar button item instance and in the other case if you use the appearance proxy.

Single instance:

saveButton.setTitleTextAttributes([NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.grayColor()], forState: .Disabled)

Appearance proxy:

UIBarButtonItem.appearanceWhenContainedInInstancesOfClasses([MyNavigationController.self]).setTitleTextAttributes([NSForegroundColorAttributeName: UIColor.grayColor()], forState: .Disabled)

So I finally managed to get this working as it should, and the problem was that I was setting the color of UIBarButtonItems twice, once using [navBar setTintColor:] and once using the appearance proxy. Leaving just the appearance proxy solves the problem.