To set the back button title for a view controller without changing its title use:
Objective-C:
self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithTitle:@"" style:self.navigationItem.backBarButtonItem.style target:nil action:nil];
Swift:
navigationItem.backBarButtonItem = UIBarButtonItem(title: "", style: .plain, target: nil, action: nil)
To be clear, this is done on the view controller that you would see if you hit the back button. i.e. instead of seeing ‘< Settings’ you want to just see ‘<‘ then on your SettingsViewController you would put this in your init
. Then you don’t get any of the problems of the title not showing when you’re looking at the view controller itself.