How to detect orientation change?

Question

I am using Swift and I want to be able to load a UIViewController when I rotate to landscape, can anyone point me in the right direction?

I Can't find anything online and a little bit confused by the documentation.

Answer 1

Need to detect rotation while using the camera with AVFoundation, and found that the didRotate (now deprecated) & willTransition methods were unreliable for my needs. Using the notification posted by David did work, but is not current for Swift 3.x/4.x.

Swift 4.2 The notification name has been changed.

The closure value remains the same as Swift 4.0:

var didRotate: (Notification) -> Void = { notification in
        switch UIDevice.current.orientation {
        case .landscapeLeft, .landscapeRight:
            print("landscape")
        case .portrait, .portraitUpsideDown:
            print("Portrait")
        default:
            print("other")
        }
    }

To set up the notification for Swift 4.2:

NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(forName: UIDevice.orientationDidChangeNotification,
                                       object: nil,
                                       queue: .main,
                                       using: didRotate)

To tear down the notification for Swift 4.2:

NotificationCenter.default.removeObserver(self,
                                          name: UIDevice.orientationDidChangeNotification,
                                          object: nil)

Regarding the deprecation statement, my initial comment was misleading, so I wanted to update that. As noted, the usage of @objc inference has been deprecated, which in turn was needed to use a #selector. By using a closure instead, this can be avoided and you now have a solution that should avoid a crash due to calling an invalid selector.

Everything below here is obsolete as of XCode 10 & iOS 4.2

Swift 4.0 With Swift 4.0, Apple has encouraged us to avoid using the #selector, so this approach uses a completion block now. This approach is also backwards compatible with Swift 3.x & would be the recommended approach going forward.

This is the compiler warning you will receive in a Swift 4.x project if you use the #selector function due to the deprecation of @objc inference:

Entry in swift-evolution on this change.

Setup the callback:

// If you do not use the notification var in your callback, 
// you can safely replace it with _
    var didRotate: (Notification) -> Void = { notification in
        switch UIDevice.current.orientation {
        case .landscapeLeft, .landscapeRight:
            print("landscape")
        case .portrait, .portraitUpsideDown:
            print("Portrait")
        default:
            print("other")
        }
    }

Setup the notification:

NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(forName: .UIDeviceOrientationDidChange,
                                       object: nil,
                                       queue: .main,
                                       using: didRotate)

Tear it down:

NotificationCenter.default.removeObserver(self, name: .UIDeviceOrientationDidChange, object: nil)

Answer 2

For Swift 3

override func viewWillTransition(to size: CGSize, with coordinator: UIViewControllerTransitionCoordinator) {
    if UIDevice.current.orientation.isLandscape {
        //Landscape
    }
    else {
        //Portrait
    }
}

Answer 3

- (void)viewDidLoad {
  [super viewDidLoad];
  [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter]addObserver:self selector:@selector(OrientationDidChange:) name:UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification object:nil];
}

-(void)OrientationDidChange:(NSNotification*)notification {
  UIDeviceOrientation Orientation=[[UIDevice currentDevice]orientation];

  if(Orientation==UIDeviceOrientationLandscapeLeft || Orientation==UIDeviceOrientationLandscapeRight) {
    NSLog(@"Landscape");
  } else if(Orientation==UIDeviceOrientationPortrait) {
    NSLog(@"Potrait Mode");
  }
}

NOTE: Just use this code to identify UIViewController is in which orientation

Answer 4

override func viewWillTransition(to size: CGSize, with coordinator: UIViewControllerTransitionCoordinator) {
    if UIDevice.current.orientation.isLandscape {
        print("Landscape")
    } else {
        print("Portrait")
    }
}

Answer 5

I know this question is for Swift, but since it's one of the top links for a Google search and if you're looking for the same code in Objective-C:

// add the observer
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(rotated:) name:UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification object:nil];

// remove the observer
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification object:nil];

// method signature
- (void)rotated:(NSNotification *)notification {
    // do stuff here
}

Answer 6

Using -orientation property of UIDevice is not correct (even if it could work in most of cases) and could lead to some bugs, for instance UIDeviceOrientation consider also the orientation of the device if it is face up or down, there is no direct pair in UIInterfaceOrientation enum for those values.
Furthermore, if you lock your app in some particular orientation, UIDevice will give you the device orientation without taking that into account.
On the other side iOS8 has deprecated the interfaceOrientation property on UIViewController class.
There are 2 options available to detect the interface orientation:

• Use the status bar orientation
• Use size classes, on iPhone if they are not overridden they could give you a way to understand the current interface orientation
  

What is still missing is a way to understand the direction of a change of interface orientation, that is very important during animations.
In the session of WWDC 2014 "View controller advancement in iOS8" the speaker provides a solution to that problem too, using the method that replaces -will/DidRotateToInterfaceOrientation.

Here the proposed solution partially implemented, more info here:

func viewWillTransitionToSize(size: CGSize, withTransitionCoordinator coordinator: UIViewControllerTransitionCoordinator) {
        let orientation = orientationFromTransform(coordinator.targetTransform())
        let oldOrientation = UIApplication.sharedApplication().statusBarOrientation
        myWillRotateToInterfaceOrientation(orientation,duration: duration)
        coordinator.animateAlongsideTransition({ (ctx) in
            self.myWillAnimateRotationToInterfaceOrientation(orientation,
            duration:duration)
            }) { (ctx) in
                self.myDidAnimateFromInterfaceOrientation(oldOrientation)
        }
    }