Can't change text of navigation item back button <p>I want to hide the text of the back button on the navigation bar and so have found past questions such as this: <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23853617/uinavigationbar-hide-back-button-text">UINavigationBar Hide back Button Text</a></p> <p>However I can't change the text at all, either via using the storyboard, or in code. See screenshot below for attempt at changing it using the storyboard:</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gxwgh.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gxwgh.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <p>Or if I try to do it programatically by adding the following to viewDidLoad of the pushed view controller </p> <pre><code> self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem?.title = "stuff" </code></pre> <p>It has no effect, nor does moving the same line of code to the view controller doing the pushing.</p> <p>How come it won't change at all regardless of how I'm trying to change it? How come using the storyboard, the navigation item title can be set, but not the back button text?</p> <p>If I add the following to the pushed view controller then I can get the text to change:</p> <pre><code>UIBarButtonItem.appearance().setTitleTextAttributes([NSForegroundColorAttributeName:UIColor.clearColor()], forState: UIControlState.Normal) UIBarButtonItem.appearance().setTitleTextAttributes([NSForegroundColorAttributeName:UIColor.clearColor()], forState: UIControlState.Highlighted) </code></pre> <p>But I would like to understand why none of the other ways of trying to change it have any effect</p>