iOS 6 rotations: supportedInterfaceOrientations do

Question

I´m having this issue with iOS 6 SDK: I´m having some views that should be allowed to rotate (e.g. a videoview), and some that don´t. Now I understand I have to check all orientations in the app´s Info.plist and then sort out in each ViewController, what should happen. But it doesn´t work! The app always rotates to the orientations, that are given in the Info.plist.

Info.plist:

<key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations</key>
    <array>
        <string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait</string>
        <string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft</string>
        <string>UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight</string>
    </array>

any ViewController that shouldn´t be allowed to rotate:

//deprecated
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {
return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait);
}

- (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations{
return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskPortrait;
}

Observation: App rotates to landscape and portrait orientation. Any ideas why or what I´m doing wrong?

Cheers, Marc

Edit: My latest findings also indicate, that if you want to have rotation at some point in your app, you have to activate all four rotation directions in your project settings or Info.plist. An alternative to this is to override

- (NSUInteger)application:(UIApplication *)application supportedInterfaceOrientationsForWindow:(UIWindow *)window

in your AppDelegate, which overrides the Info.plist. It isn´t possible anymore to set only Portrait in your Info.plist and then having rotation in some ViewController by overriding shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation or supportedInterfaceOrientations.

Answer 1

@Shimanski Artem's answer is good, but I think using the topmost (currently visible) controller is better solution:

@interface UINavigationController(InterfaceOrientation)

@end

@implementation UINavigationController(InterfaceOrientation)

- (NSUInteger) supportedInterfaceOrientations {
    if (self.viewControllers.count > 0){
        return [[self.viewControllers objectAtIndex:[self.viewControllers count] - 1] supportedInterfaceOrientations];
    }
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAll;
}

@end

Answer 2

For people using UINavigationController and Swift, you can add this extension to your project. After that, navigation controllers delegate the control to their child controller.

extension UINavigationController {
    override public func supportedInterfaceOrientations()
    -> UIInterfaceOrientationMask {
        if let ctrl = topViewController {
            return ctrl.supportedInterfaceOrientations()
        }
        return super.supportedInterfaceOrientations()
    }

    override public func shouldAutorotate() -> Bool {
        if let ctrl = topViewController {
            return ctrl.shouldAutorotate()
        }
        return super.shouldAutorotate()
    }
}

Answer 3

As an alternate option, in case you want to preserve pre-iOS6 rotation functionality in your app:

Here's a helpful bit of code on github that swizzles the method calls for iOS6 so that rotation works like it did on iOS4/iOS4. This really helped me, as I'm supporting a legacy app that really micro-manages its rotations. It would have been a lot of work to implement the changes required for iOS6. Kudos to the user who posted it.

https://gist.github.com/3725118