How to force view controller orientation in iOS 8?

Question

Before iOS 8, we used below code in conjunction with supportedInterfaceOrientations and shouldAutoRotate delegate methods to force app orientation to any particular orientation. I used below code snippet to programmatically rotate the app to desired orientation. Firstly, I am changing the status bar orientation. And then just presenting and immediately dismissing a modal view rotates the view to desired orientation.

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight animated:YES];
UIViewController *c = [[UIViewController alloc]init];
[self presentViewController:vc animated:NO completion:nil];
[self dismissViewControllerAnimated:NO completion:nil];

But this is failing in iOS 8. Also, I have seen some answers in stack overflow where people suggested that we should always avoid this approach from iOS 8 onwards.

To be more specific, my application is a universal type of application. There are three controllers in total.

1. First View controller- It should support all orientations in iPad and only portrait (home button down) in iPhone.

2. Second View controller- It should support only landscape right in all conditions

3. Third View controller- It should support only landscape right in all conditions

We are using navigation controller for page navigation. From the first view controller, on a button click action, we are pushing the second one on stack. So, when the second view controller arrives, irrespective of device orientation, the app should lock in landscape right only.

Below is my shouldAutorotate and supportedInterfaceOrientations methods in second and third view controller.

-(NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations{
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskLandscapeRight;
}

-(BOOL)shouldAutorotate {
    return NO;
}

Is there any solution for this or any better way of locking a view controller in particular orientation for iOS 8. Please help!!

Answer 1

For me, the top level VC needed to implement the orientation overrides. Using VC's down the stack will have no effect if the top VC is not implementing.

VC-main
    |
    -> VC 2
        |
        -> VC 3

Only VC-Main is listened to, essentially in my testing.

Answer 2

For iOS 7 - 10:

Objective-C:

[[UIDevice currentDevice] setValue:@(UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft) forKey:@"orientation"];
[UINavigationController attemptRotationToDeviceOrientation];

Swift 3:

let value = UIInterfaceOrientation.landscapeLeft.rawValue
UIDevice.current.setValue(value, forKey: "orientation")
UINavigationController.attemptRotationToDeviceOrientation()

Just call it in - viewDidAppear: of the presented view controller.

Answer 3

I tried a few solutions in here and the important thing to understand is that it's the root view controller that will determine if it will rotate or not.

I created the following objective-c project github.com/GabLeRoux/RotationLockInTabbedViewChild with a working example of a TabbedViewController where one child view is allowed rotating and the other child view is locked in portrait.

It's not perfect but it works and the same idea should work for other kind of root views such as NavigationViewController. :)

Answer 4

My solution

In AppDelegate:

func application(application: UIApplication, supportedInterfaceOrientationsForWindow window: UIWindow?) -> UIInterfaceOrientationMask {
    if let topController = UIViewController.topMostViewController() {
        if topController is XXViewController {
            return [.Portrait, .LandscapeLeft]
        }
    }
    return [.Portrait]
}

XXViewController is the ViewController you want to support Landscape mode.

Then Sunny Shah's solution would work in your XXViewController on any iOS version:

let value = UIInterfaceOrientation.LandscapeLeft.rawValue
UIDevice.currentDevice().setValue(value, forKey: "orientation")

This is the utility function to find the top most ViewController.

extension UIViewController {

    /// Returns the current application's top most view controller.
    public class func topMostViewController() -> UIViewController? {
        let rootViewController = UIApplication.sharedApplication().windows.first?.rootViewController
        return self.topMostViewControllerOfViewController(rootViewController)
    }



    /// Returns the top most view controller from given view controller's stack.
    class func topMostViewControllerOfViewController(viewController: UIViewController?) -> UIViewController? {
        // UITabBarController
        if let tabBarController = viewController as? UITabBarController,
           let selectedViewController = tabBarController.selectedViewController {
            return self.topMostViewControllerOfViewController(selectedViewController)
        }

        // UINavigationController
        if let navigationController = viewController as? UINavigationController,
           let visibleViewController = navigationController.visibleViewController {
            return self.topMostViewControllerOfViewController(visibleViewController)
        }

        // presented view controller
        if let presentedViewController = viewController?.presentedViewController {
            return self.topMostViewControllerOfViewController(presentedViewController)
        }

        // child view controller
        for subview in viewController?.view?.subviews ?? [] {
            if let childViewController = subview.nextResponder() as? UIViewController {
                return self.topMostViewControllerOfViewController(childViewController)
            }
        }

        return viewController
    }

}

Answer 5

If you are using navigationViewController you should create your own superclass for this and override:

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotate {
  id currentViewController = self.topViewController;

  if ([currentViewController isKindOfClass:[SecondViewController class]])
    return NO;

  return YES;
}

this will disable rotation in SecondViewController but if you push your SecondViewController when your device is on portrait orientation then your SecondViewController will appear in portrait mode.

Assume that you are using storyboard. You have to create manual segue (How to) and in your "onClick" method:

- (IBAction)onPlayButtonClicked:(UIBarButtonItem *)sender {
  NSNumber *value = [NSNumber numberWithInt:UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft];
  [[UIDevice currentDevice] setValue:value forKey:@"orientation"];
  [self performSegueWithIdentifier:@"PushPlayerViewController" sender:self];
}

This will force landscape orientation before your superclass disable autorotate feature.

Answer 6

Orientation rotation is a little more complicated if you are inside a UINavigationController or UITabBarController. The problem is that if a view controller is embedded in one of these controllers the navigation or tab bar controller takes precedence and makes the decisions on autorotation and supported orientations.

I use the following 2 extensions on UINavigationController and UITabBarController so that view controllers that are embedded in one of these controllers get to make the decisions.

Give View Controllers the Power!

Swift 2.3

extension UINavigationController {
    public override func supportedInterfaceOrientations() -> Int {
        return visibleViewController.supportedInterfaceOrientations()
    }
    public override func shouldAutorotate() -> Bool {
        return visibleViewController.shouldAutorotate()
    }
}

extension UITabBarController {
    public override func supportedInterfaceOrientations() -> Int {
        if let selected = selectedViewController {
            return selected.supportedInterfaceOrientations()
        }
        return super.supportedInterfaceOrientations()
    }
    public override func shouldAutorotate() -> Bool {
        if let selected = selectedViewController {
            return selected.shouldAutorotate()
        }
        return super.shouldAutorotate()
    }
}

Swift 3

extension UINavigationController {
    open override var supportedInterfaceOrientations: UIInterfaceOrientationMask {
        return visibleViewController?.supportedInterfaceOrientations ?? super.supportedInterfaceOrientations
    }

    open override var shouldAutorotate: Bool {
        return visibleViewController?.shouldAutorotate ?? super.shouldAutorotate
    }
}

extension UITabBarController {
    open override var supportedInterfaceOrientations: UIInterfaceOrientationMask {
        if let selected = selectedViewController {
            return selected.supportedInterfaceOrientations
        }
        return super.supportedInterfaceOrientations
    }

    open override var shouldAutorotate: Bool {
        if let selected = selectedViewController {
            return selected.shouldAutorotate
        }
        return super.shouldAutorotate
    }
}

Now you can override the supportedInterfaceOrientations method or you can override shouldAutoRotate in the view controller you want to lock down otherwise you can leave out the overrides in other view controllers that you want to inherit the default orientation behavior specified in your app's plist

Disable Rotation

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    override func shouldAutorotate() -> Bool {
        return false
    }
}

Lock to Specific Orientation

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    override func supportedInterfaceOrientations() -> Int {
        return Int(UIInterfaceOrientationMask.Landscape.rawValue)
    }
}

In theory this should work for all complex view controller hierarchies, but I have noticed an issue with UITabBarController. For some reason it wants to use a default orientation value. See the following blog post if you are interested in learning about how to work around some of the issues:

Lock Screen Rotation