Display UIViewController as Popup in iPhone

Question

Since there is no complete, definitive answer to this common recurring question, I'll ask and answer it here.

Often we need to present a UIViewController such that it doesn't cover full screen, as in the picture below.

Apple provides several similar UIViewController, such as UIAlertView, Twitter or Facebook share view controller, etc..

How can we achieve this effect for a custom controller?

Answer 1

NOTE : This solution is broken in iOS 8. I will post new solution ASAP.

I am going to answer here using storyboard but it is also possible without storyboard.

1. Init: Create two UIViewController in storyboard.

   • lets say FirstViewController which is normal and SecondViewController which will be the popup.

2. Modal Segue: Put UIButton in FirstViewController and create a segue on this UIButton to SecondViewController as modal segue.

3. Make Transparent: Now select UIView (UIView Which is created by default with UIViewController) of SecondViewController and change its background color to clear color.

4. Make background Dim: Add an UIImageView in SecondViewController which covers whole screen and sets its image to some dimmed semi transparent image. You can get a sample from here : UIAlertView Background Image

5. Display Design: Now add an UIView and make any kind of design you want to show. Here is a screenshot of my storyboard

   • Here I have add segue on login button which open SecondViewController as popup to ask username and password

6. Important: Now that main step. We want that SecondViewController doesn't hide FirstViewController completely. We have set clear color but this is not enough. By default it adds black behind model presentation so we have to add one line of code in viewDidLoad of FirstViewController. You can add it at another place also but it should run before segue.

   [self setModalPresentationStyle:UIModalPresentationCurrentContext];

7. Dismiss: When to dismiss depends on your use case. This is a modal presentation so to dismiss we do what we do for modal presentation:

   [self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:Nil];

Thats all.....

Any kind of suggestion and comment are welcome.

Demo : You can get demo source project from Here : Popup Demo

NEW : Someone have done very nice job on this concept : MZFormSheetController
New : I found one more code to get this kind of function : KLCPopup

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iOS 8 Update : I made this method to work with both iOS 7 and iOS 8

+ (void)setPresentationStyleForSelfController:(UIViewController *)selfController presentingController:(UIViewController *)presentingController
{
    if (iOSVersion >= 8.0)
    {
        presentingController.providesPresentationContextTransitionStyle = YES;
        presentingController.definesPresentationContext = YES;

        [presentingController setModalPresentationStyle:UIModalPresentationOverCurrentContext];
    }
    else
    {
        [selfController setModalPresentationStyle:UIModalPresentationCurrentContext];
        [selfController.navigationController setModalPresentationStyle:UIModalPresentationCurrentContext];
    }
}

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Can use this method inside prepareForSegue deligate like this

- (void)prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender {

    PopUpViewController *popup = segue.destinationViewController;
    [self setPresentationStyleForSelfController:self presentingController:popup]
}