NOTE: iOS 11 added MKUserTrackingButton that does exactly what this project is intended to be and should be preferred over this.

UserTrackingButton

A replacement for MKUserTrackingBarButtonItem when you don't have toolbars or navigation bars.

UserTrackingButton is a button that works in conjunction with MKMapView. Unlike MKUserTrackingBarButtonItem it can be used even when you don't have toolbars or navigation bars.

Installation

Carthage

Add github "mkko/UserTrackingButton" ~> 0.3.1 to you Cartfile. Follow the further instrcutions on Carthage getting started page.

NB: There is a bug with @IBDesignable when using external frameworks that prevents the view from rendering wihtin Interface Builder. Further reading can be found here.

CocoaPods

Add pod 'UserTrackingButton', '~> 0.3.1' to you Podfile and run pod install.

Setup

To use UserTrackingButton from Interface Builder simply subclass a UIView component and set its class to UserTrackingButton. Then connect the mapView outlet and remember to update the button in MKMapViewDelegate methods:

extension ViewController: MKMapViewDelegate {
    
    func mapView(mapView: MKMapView, didUpdateUserLocation userLocation: MKUserLocation) {
        userTrackingButton.updateStateAnimated(true)
    }
    
    func mapView(mapView: MKMapView, didChangeUserTrackingMode mode: MKUserTrackingMode, animated: Bool) {
        userTrackingButton.updateStateAnimated(true)
    }
}

The manual updating is a minor inconvenience as the MKMapView instance can only have one delegate. However, if you're using RxSwift, there's a wrapper to make this easier:

        Observable.combineLatest(mapView.rx_didUpdateUserLocation, mapView.rx_didChangeUserTrackingMode) { return ($0, $1) }
            .subscribe { _ in self.userTrackingButton.updateState(true) }
            /* Also this, if you're using: */ .addDisposableTo(disposeBag)

When creating the button programmatically the same steps are required:

let btn = UserTrackingButton(frame: trackingButtonFrame)
btn.mapView = self.mapView
self.view.addSubview(btn)