Add UIActivityIndicatorView to UINavigationBar

For me it took sometime to figure out how to show activity indicator in the navigation bar. Later I found it was very simple. When you push a view to the navigation you get to play with navigationItem property on the view that is being pushed. In your viewWillAppear method you can add this code.

-(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated{
	[super viewWillAppear:YES];
	//Create an instance of activity indicator view
	UIActivityIndicatorView * activityIndicator = [[UIActivityIndicatorView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 20, 20)];
	//set the initial property
	[activityIndicator stopAnimating];
	[activityIndicator hidesWhenStopped];
	//Create an instance of Bar button item with custome view which is of activity indicator
	UIBarButtonItem * barButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:activityIndicator];
	//Set the bar button the navigation bar
	[self navigationItem].rightBarButtonItem = barButton;
	//Memory clean up
	[activityIndicator release];
	[barButton release];
}

I have done a sample application demonstrating this code. It is based on iPhone navigation project template. In the application I have two action to start and stop the animation.

-(IBAction)startActivity:(id)sender{
	//Send startAnimating message to the view
	[(UIActivityIndicatorView *)[self navigationItem].rightBarButtonItem.customView startAnimating];
}

-(IBAction)stopActivity:(id)sender{
	//Send stopAnimating message to the view
	[(UIActivityIndicatorView *)[self navigationItem].rightBarButtonItem.customView stopAnimating];
}

Screen shot of the application

Download Load Activity Indicator Xcode project files.