IOS – UIBarButtonItem Identifier – option to create “settings” cogwheel button

Yes, you can add UIBarButtonItems in Interface Builder, and they should work.

The identifier lets you use a preset button (like Edit or Reload), or you can choose Custom and make your own button.

EDIT: I may be able to help further if you could explain how UIBarButtonItems added through IB don't work.

UPDATE: UIViewController.editButtonItem is a special method that returns a UIBarButtonItem that invokes the view's setEditing method. You can achieve the same effect by creating a method that does the same thing and connecting the selector to your UIBarButtonItem in IB.

In your header file:

- IBAction edit:(id)sender;

and in your implementation file:

- (IBAction) edit:(id)sender {
    [self setEditing:YES animated:YES];
}

then connect the selector to the UIBarButtonItem.

However, you might not be able to create this connection in the default Navigation-Based Application template since the Table View is in a separate file.

Once constructed, a UIBarButtonItem's "Identifier" can not be modified. However, the UI can be changed by replacing the button with a programmatically constructed variant. For example:

UIBarButtonItem *addButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemAdd 
                                                                           target:self 
                                                                           action:@selector(doAddAction:)];