Presentation Style default in iOS 13

This week is International Week of the Deaf, so to thank the community that have been a big part of my app Subtitles Viewer‘s success, Subtitles Viewer PRO is free for the whole week. Coincidentally, and perhaps unfortunately, iOS 13 is also brand spanking newly released this week, so just when the app is getting substantial downloads, some teething issues have presented themselves with the new release. Grrr…

Now I know Apple liked large navigation bars from iOS 11, but these navigation bars looked extra large. What’s worse, I found that after building the app in Xcode 11, when I swipe down, the whole app disappeared, leaving behind just the title screen!

Strange! I took a look at the good old capture view hierarchy and discovered a transition view peeking up above the navigation controller. Hmm, the plot thickens…

What’s going on? It turns out this was all related to a change in default presentation style.

Blink and you’ll miss it – in the WWDC State of the Union 2019, this was announced:

Another component of iOS 13’s new look is cards. Since the original SDK, the default presentation style on iPhone has covered the full screen. We’re changing that default to a much more fluid card presentation. Cards provide a visual stack so you can see at a glance that you’re in a presentation. And even better, they’re dismissible with just a single downward swipe.

So previously segues would always default to a presentation style of ‘Full screen’, exhibit a:

Now, presentations on the iPhone default to what Apple are calling ‘cards’, exhibit b:

Note that after presenting the view controller as a card, you can swipe it down to remove it.

In practice, what has happened is that the default presentation style is ‘automatic’ which in iOS 13 is interpreted by UIViewController as ‘Page Sheet’. The documentation for UIModalPresentationStyle.automatic describes this: “For most view controllers, UIKit maps this style to the UIModalPresentationStyle.pageSheet style”.

This new feature could work well in some UX design, but in Subtitles Viewer, when the intro animation is complete it automatically segues to the rest of the app. Swiping down to see the intro animation again was definitely unwanted in this case.

What to do about it? Turns out the solution is simple. If you select the presenting view controller in the storyboard and select Attributes Inspector, you’ll find the Presentation attribute is probably set to Automatic. Change this Full Screen, and you’re done, problem solved!

About craiggrummitt

iOS development with Swift - book: https://manning.com/books/ios-development-with-swift video course: https://www.manning.com/livevideo/ios-development-with-swift-lv