Consider a UIViewController that supports different interface orientations based on its state, which can change based on user input.
AFAIK, supportedInterfaceOrientations is only called when the device orientation changes. Is there a way to tell the application that it needs to ask again about the supported interface orientations, even if the device orientation didn't change?
You're correct. Basically you can only respond to an orientation change, not force it.
But there is a trick you can use to fool the application to go through all the orientation callbacks.
You should have a ViewController which you created at the start of your app and set as the window's rootViewController. Remove that ViewController's view from its superview (which is the window) and immediately add it as a subview to the window again. Since the entire visible view hierarchy just changed, the app will go through all orientation callbacks again.
But I wouldn't rely on this too much if I were you, while it is logical for this to happen, you never know when Apple might change this. Now that I think of it, I haven't tested this in iOS 6 yet. It does work on iOS 4 and 5.
I am trying to push a portrait only view controller onto a controller that allows portrait or landscape. The issue I'm having is that if the user is in landscape mode and I push the new controller on it will remain in landscape mode and just look all screwed up. How do I force the orientation to change to portrait as the new view controller is pushed on?
KDaker's answer is correct but another option you can think about is whether you can limit navigation when your orientation isn't what you want. This isn't necessarily a good idea but there are situations where it can work well. An example would be if you had a video which when rotated to landscape became full screen and covered your navigation back button until it returns to portrait.
in iOS 5 and anything before you cant 'force' an orientation from one view to another. You can support only one orientation for the project but then allow autorotation. So in your case, you can only allow autorotation and wait for the user to rotate the device.
In iOS 6, they have changed the way orientation handling works, and its become alot more flexible. You now have these methods:
- (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations
- (UIInterfaceOrientation)preferredInterfaceOrientationForPresentation
Using these, you can present your view controller in any orientation you prefer, given that it is supported in the former method.
hope this helps.
I'm a new iOS programming and I'm developing a simple iPhone game that needs to run in landscape only. I've ...
set supported orientations in the target settings
added the req. plist item (initial interface orientation)
overridden shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation to return YES only for landscape modes
.. and the app "looks" correct, but there are a few odd things going on.
Issue 1 - I'm trying to manually position my views and not rely on autolayout. I've got a UIView in a NIB that I'm loading that needs to be positioned 150px from the right edge of the screen. I have to get the UIViewController's view's height (not width) to correctly position it - like it's not rotated to landscape at this point in the code.
Issue 2 - Implementing a UINavigationController to go from the title screen to the game interaction. When I'm pushing the interaction UIViewController to the stack, it slides in from the right like it's supposed to. When I go back to the title by popping the interaction, it slides UP to the title. It's seems like it's rotating back to portrait?
I think there is something very basic that I'm missing, but I can't find it in my app code. I've gone over the lists for a landscape app but they don't mention more than the list above.
Are there any other things/settings/methods to override that I should be on the look out for?
You need to set shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation in your other viewControllers as well. Especially the ones displayed inside your UINavigationController.
Issue 2:
Don't use many UIViewController's. Use one view controller. Create one main UIViewController and for other UIViewController's just do:
[mainviewcontrl presentModalViewcontroller: child_viewcontrl animated: YES];
For delete a child view controller, use
[child_viewcontrl dismissModalViewControllerAnimated: YES];
I am working on an iPhone app with a UINavigationController interface and there I want all views to ONLY allow default portrait rotation except for one. I know I can return 'NO' in the shouldAutoRotate method but basically when I am in the view that does allow rotation and go back to the previous view, the other views are then stuck in landscape as well. Any ideas?
you need to change status bar orientation when you go back to previous view.
I did some experiments on autorotation.
The situation: I have a TabBar 4(tabs), three should be portrait only. The last one is a UINavigationController, which by itself should not autorotate any of the stacked controllers. It is basically a browsing application, as I show file and folders everything should be portrait. Some times, a special UIViewController is pushed, and I would like only this one to autorotate (it is always the last on the stack). In this last view, the tabbar is hidden.
How I achieved the goal: I subclassed the UITabBarController, to override the standard shouldAutorotate method behaviour:
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {
if([self.selectedViewController isKindOfClass:[UINavigationController class]])
return [[(UINavigationController*)self.selectedViewController visibleViewController] shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:interfaceOrientation];
else
return [self.selectedViewController shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:interfaceOrientation];
This way, the answer of shouldAutorotate is forwarded to the controlled tabs, and in particular for the UINavigationController, it is again delegated to the visible UIViewController. Basically this works, as I have all the UIViewControllers answering NO, except for the particular one I described above: correctly, when rotating the Simulator, only when the special UIViewController is visible, the interface rotates to landscape, whici is perfect. The Tabbar here is hidden, so user don't get that also that one is rotated (which would be unconsistent in my design: basically whenever the tabbar is visible, which means everywhere except in this special view, the application is portrait only).
The problem is that I would like that, even if the device is still in landscape mode and user pops the special ViewController, the interface should behave consistently and return to portrait mode. Instead, when I pop, the interface stays in landscape (it's not designed in that way so it's a mess, of course) even when showing a UIViewController that would answer NO to shouldAutorotate... this is because (I think) the method is called only when rotation occurs, so until the rotation actually occurs again, the interface is rotated to landscape anyway.
How do avoid this? My first solution would be somehow to intercept the popping of the last view, and rotate manually the view before popping... but I'm not sure, I hope there is some more robust method to handle!!
I use the simulator with 3.0, dunno if this makes a difference.
I know that this is not a solution to your problem, but I think you should really avoid this kind of user interface when portrait-only portrait+landscape or landscape-only pages mixed on the same UINavigationController. Unfortunately the rotation management is extremely buggy and the bugs vary on different firmware versions.
I managed to quite the same thing in one of my projects, but had to remove it later due to firmware bugs: for example if you pressed the "back" button in landscape mode and went back to a portrait-only view, it often occured that the status bar and/or the navigation bar remained in landscape mode and the layout was completely broken. As far as I know this bug is not yet fixed although it was already present in firmware 2.x.
If you still want to do this I suggest the following things:
Make sure that all overridden UIViewController methods (init, viewWillAppear, etc) calls its [super methodName]. If not, auto-rotation is silently buggy. This was mentioned in the "Getting Ready for iPhone OS 3.0 Technical Note" (https://developer.apple.com/iphone/checklist/), but currently this document is unavailable :(
You may experiment with calling the undocumented [UIDevice setOrientation:] method when leaving the landscape view. It sometimes needs to be called twice, once with the current orientation and once with the desired orientation :) You may also need to call [UIDevice setStatusBarOrientation:] if the status bar remains in landscape mode. But note that Apple is likely to reject your application if you use these methods (they introduced an automatic tool some time ago which detects the presence of undocumented symbols in your application).
I had the same problem as you, and I solved this way:
I subclassed the UITabBarController, and added the following code:
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation
{
if (self.selectedViewController)
return [self.selectedViewController shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:interfaceOrientation];
else
return (interfaceOrientation == UIDeviceOrientationPortrait);
}
This way, every child view controller could control its own orientation.
The problem is that you are rotating your UITabBarController (with the child view controller on top of it) rather than just the child view controller. You should be able to implement shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: only in your child view controller and have it work properly. It would also simplify your code.
I have never had this issue, but I've also never implemented shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: in a "container" view controller like a UITabBarController or UINavigationController.
The problem with your implementation is that you use the visibleViewController member of UINavigationController. You should use topViewController instead and everything will work as expected.