Restore pre-iOS7 UINavigationController pushViewController animation

Question

So. Just started transitioning my IOS code to IOS7, and ran into a bit of problem.

I've got a UINavigationController, which has child ViewControllers and I'm using pushViewController to display the next views. To create a parallax animation with a set of images, if customized the UINavigationController to animate a set of UIImageViews and my child ViewControllers all have a self.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor], transparency.

Since iOS7, the way the UINavController animates it child vc's, is updated, by partially moving the current view controller and on top pushing the new viewcontroller, my parallax animation looks crap. I see the previous VC move a bit and then disappear. Is there any way I can restore the previous UINavigationController pushViewController animation? I can't seem to find this in the code.

WelcomeLoginViewController* welcomeLoginViewController = [self.storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"WelcomeLogin"];
    [self.navigationController pushViewController:welcomeLoginViewController animated:YES];

Even tried using:

    [UIView animateWithDuration:0.75
                     animations:^{
                         [UIView setAnimationCurve:UIViewAnimationCurveEaseInOut];
                         [self.navigationController pushViewController:welcomeLoginViewController animated:NO];
                         [UIView setAnimationTransition:<specific_animation_form> forView:self.navigationController.view cache:NO];
                     }];

Does anyone have any clue?

For the record, the stock animation (i.e just the straight push with animated:YES) exhibits the same behavior now. — skantner, Sep 18 '13 at 21:03

score 46 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 18 '13 at 20:58

46

I managed to workaround the new transition type by creating a category for UINavigationController. In my case I needed to revert it to the old transition style because I have transparent viewControllers that slide over a static background.

UINavigationController+Retro.h

@interface UINavigationController (Retro)

- (void)pushViewControllerRetro:(UIViewController *)viewController;
- (void)popViewControllerRetro;

@end

UINavigationController+Retro.m

#import "UINavigationController+Retro.h"

@implementation UINavigationController (Retro)

- (void)pushViewControllerRetro:(UIViewController *)viewController {
    CATransition *transition = [CATransition animation];
    transition.duration = 0.25;
    transition.timingFunction = [CAMediaTimingFunction functionWithName:kCAMediaTimingFunctionEaseInEaseOut];
    transition.type = kCATransitionPush;
    transition.subtype = kCATransitionFromRight;
    [self.view.layer addAnimation:transition forKey:nil];

    [self pushViewController:viewController animated:NO];
}

- (void)popViewControllerRetro {
    CATransition *transition = [CATransition animation];
    transition.duration = 0.25;
    transition.timingFunction = [CAMediaTimingFunction functionWithName:kCAMediaTimingFunctionEaseInEaseOut];
    transition.type = kCATransitionPush;
    transition.subtype = kCATransitionFromLeft;
    [self.view.layer addAnimation:transition forKey:nil];

    [self popViewControllerAnimated:NO];
}

@end

answered Sep 18 '13 at 20:58

Arne

1,537
10
9

Hi Arne, Thanks for your solution. However you animate the UINavigationController's view instead of the child views of the controller. That way, the navigation bar exhibits different behavior. Tried solving by creating a completely custom animations of both views, but still not getting the desired effect. – Bart van den Berg Sep 19 '13 at 09:32
Thanks, this works for me. However, when the user taps the Back button, it reverts to the busted animation (because the back button doesn't call popViewControllerRetro). – Bill Oct 03 '13 at 12:36
Bill, you can replace the back button with ```leftBarButtonItem```. I chose transition.duration = 0.4 because it seemed to be closer to the old speed, at least on the Xcode simulators. – jcsahnwaldt Reinstate Monica Oct 07 '13 at 02:22
This did the trick for me - I also had a viewcontroller with transparent background being pushed onto NavigationController with transparent background and a background image. The new iOS7 transition looked like crap, I'm wondering why Apple cannot just add those new features "silently", without "brute-enforcing" changes to native UI behaviour - gives us all a lot of trouble and headaches! – Miros Oct 14 '13 at 15:09
This worked wonderfully for me. I was using clearColor for my viewControllers (in order to get smooth animation underneath on UIWindow subviews), but got an annoying random stutter until implementing this. – weienw Oct 31 '13 at 22:12
Thanks for this great solution... I noticed one thing , when I call pushViewControllerRetro with time interval 0.4 I can see black color while transition. Any one saw this behavior ? Also simple popViewControler:animated works for me. So still do I need to use popViewControllerRetro ? Thanks – iOSAppDev Dec 31 '13 at 10:11
@iOSAppDev, I'm seeing the same thing! The black and white colours... anyone a fix? – Martin Herman May 27 '14 at 09:06
@Martin I didn't get any solution yet – iOSAppDev May 27 '14 at 09:14
@iOSAppDev I think we should create a new question for that... After slowing it down to around 1 sec, I've found that it is because the old VC flashes white and the new one too. Check it out. By any chance, did you find some other solution? – Martin Herman May 28 '14 at 08:53
@iOSAppDev - I found the solution. What I and probably you did, is add a background layer to the UINavigationController `[_navController.view insertSubview:_someSubview atIndex:0];` ... Now what I do is add the background view to the UIWindow as a subview instead... `[self.window addSubview:_someView];` and call `[self.view setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];` in every `viewDidAppear` of the UIViewController being pushed. Works fabulously! :) – Martin Herman May 31 '14 at 10:36

ArtFeel · Answer 2 · 2017-03-08T19:38:21.790

22

I have the same problem with clear background colors and crappy animations, so I create custom transitioning for ViewController with new iOS7 API. All you need is simply set a delegate for your navigation controller:

// NavigationController does not retain delegate, so you should hold it.
self.navigationController.delegate = self.navigationTransitioningDelegate;

Just add this files into your project: MGNavigationTransitioningDelegate.

edited Mar 08 '17 at 19:38

answered Nov 28 '13 at 11:40

ArtFeel

11,701
4
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41

Very useful! Thank you! – Sagar D May 03 '16 at 06:12
Unfortunately this solution breaks autolayout - when you rotate and go back the views are all broken on the previous page until you rotate again. – Tom May 19 '16 at 04:26
1

Good solution. I made Swift 3 version of your gist: https://gist.github.com/steryokhin/f136bd3e0c38b0fcdbff30b311714257 – Sergey Teryokhin Mar 08 '17 at 13:59
@Tom Maybe this would help https://gist.github.com/ArtFeel/7690431#gistcomment-1912196 – ArtFeel Mar 08 '17 at 19:39

score 18 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 02 '13 at 03:42

I had a problem where when UIViewController A did a pushViewController to push UIViewController B, the push animation would stop at about 25%, halt, and then slide B in the rest of the way.

This DID NOT happen on iOS 6, but as soon as I started using iOS 7 as the base SDK in XCode 5, this started happening.

The fix is that view controller B did not have a backgroundColor set on its root view (the root view is the one that is the value of viewController.view, that you typically set in loadView). Setting a backgroundColor in that root view's initializer fixed the problem.

I managed to fix this as follows:

// CASE 1: The root view for a UIViewController subclass that had a halting animation

- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame

{

     if ((self = [super initWithFrame:frame])) {

          // Do some initialization ...

          // self.backgroundColor was NOT being set

          // and animation in pushViewController was slow and stopped at 25% and paused

     }

     return self;

}

// CASE 2: HERE IS THE FIX

- (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame

{

     if ((self = [super initWithFrame:frame])) {

          // Do some initialization ...

          // Set self.backgroundColor for the fix!

          // and animation in pushViewController is no longer slow and and no longer stopped at 25% and paused

          self.backgroundColor = [UIColor whiteColor]; // or some other non-clear color

     }

     return self;

}

I'm having exactly the same problem, but unfortunately my view B has clearColor, I've just have to add exactly the same image background as self.parentViewController.view.xxxxxx and now it works... thanks! — mongeta, Oct 02 '13 at 14:14
How did you get that? i could have tried Voodoo instead..thanks — amar, Jul 16 '14 at 12:41

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 08 '13 at 04:56

First of, I'm not using Storyboard. I tried using UINavigationController+Retro. For some reason, the UINavigationController is having a hard time releasing the UIViewController at the top of the stack. Here's the solution that works for me using iOS 7 custom transition.

Set delegate to self.
```
navigationController.delegate = self;
```

Declare this UINavigationControllerDelegate.

- (id<UIViewControllerAnimatedTransitioning>)navigationController (UINavigationController *)navigationController 
animationControllerForOperation:(UINavigationControllerOperation)operation
fromViewController:(UIViewController *)fromVC 
toViewController:(UIViewController *)toVC 
{
    TransitionAnimator *animator = [TransitionAnimator new]; 
    animator.presenting = YES;
    return animator;
}

Note that it'll only get called when animated is set to YES. For example

[navigationController pushViewController:currentViewController animated:YES];

Create the animator class extending NSObject. I called mine TransitionAnimator, which was modified from TeehanLax's TLTransitionAnimator inside UIViewController-Transitions-Example.

TransitionAnimator.h

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
@interface TransitionAnimator : NSObject <UIViewControllerAnimatedTransitioning>
@property (nonatomic, assign, getter = isPresenting) BOOL presenting;
@end

TransitionAnimator.m

#import "TransitionAnimator.h"
@implementation TransitionAnimator
- (NSTimeInterval)transitionDuration:(id <UIViewControllerContextTransitioning>)transitionContext {
    return 0.5f;
}
- (void)animateTransition:(id <UIViewControllerContextTransitioning>)transitionContext{
    UIViewController *fromVC = [transitionContext viewControllerForKey:UITransitionContextFromViewControllerKey];
    UIViewController *toVC = [transitionContext viewControllerForKey:UITransitionContextToViewControllerKey];    
    if (self.presenting) {
        //ANIMATE VC ENTERING FROM THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SCREEN
        [transitionContext.containerView addSubview:fromVC.view];
        [transitionContext.containerView addSubview:toVC.view];     
        toVC.view.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, 2*APP_W0, APP_H0); //SET ORIGINAL POSITION toVC OFF TO THE RIGHT                
        [UIView animateWithDuration:[self transitionDuration:transitionContext] 
            animations:^{
                fromVC.view.frame = CGRectMake(0, (-1)*APP_W0, APP_W0, APP_H0); //MOVE fromVC OFF TO THE LEFT
                toVC.view.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, APP_W0, APP_H0); //ANIMATE toVC IN TO OCCUPY THE SCREEN
            } completion:^(BOOL finished) {
                [transitionContext completeTransition:YES];
            }];
    }else{
        //ANIMATE VC EXITING TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SCREEN
    }
}
@end

Use presenting flag to set the direction you want to animate or which ever condition you prefer. Here's the link to Apple reference.

Great. One thing is no need to use presenting variable. UINavigationControllerOperation indicates this operation is Push or Pop. — ttotto, Apr 08 '14 at 17:56

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 24 '13 at 14:15

Thanks guys for the feedback. Found a solution in completely recreating the UINavigationController's behavior. When I was nearly finished I ran into Nick Lockwood's solution:

https://github.com/nicklockwood/OSNavigationController

OSNavigationController is a open source re-implementation of UINavigationController. It currently features only a subset of the functionality of UINavigationController, but the long-term aim is to replicate 100% of the features.

OSNavigationController is not really intended to be used as-is. The idea is that you can fork it and then easily customize its appearance and behaviour to suit any special requirements that your app may have. Customizing OSNavigationController is much simpler than trying to customize UINavigationController due to the fact that the code is open and you don't need to worry about private methods, undocumented behavior, or implementation changes between versions.

By overriding my UINavigationController with his code, I was able to work with background images in UINavigationcontrollers

Thanks!

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 03 '14 at 09:19

Simply add in:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions

This:

[[self window] setBackgroundColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];

The final result:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions (NSDictionary *)launchOptions {    
    [[self window] setBackgroundColor:[UIColor whiteColor]];

    // Override point for customization after application launch.
    return YES;
}

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Sep 24 '13 at 16:50

1

Apparently in iOS7 there's a new way define your own custom UIViewController transitions. Look in the docs for UIViewControllerTransitioningDelegate. Also, here's a link to an article about it: http://www.doubleencore.com/2013/09/ios-7-custom-transitions/

answered Sep 24 '13 at 16:50

John Jacecko

1,870
1
16
12

3

Unless I am wrong, this seems to only work with presenting a view controller. I could not make it work when pushing a view controller to a navigation controller. – GenesisST Oct 02 '13 at 22:27

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 04 '20 at 22:33

Swift 5 implementation of Arne's answer:

extension UINavigationController {
  func pushViewControllerLegacyTransition(_ viewController: UIViewController) {
    let transition = CATransition()
    transition.duration = 0.25
    transition.timingFunction = CAMediaTimingFunction(name: .easeInEaseOut)
    transition.type = .push
    transition.subtype = .fromRight
    view.layer.add(transition, forKey: nil)
    pushViewController(viewController, animated: false)
  }

  func popViewControllerLegacyTransition() {
    let transition = CATransition()
    transition.duration = 0.25
    transition.timingFunction = CAMediaTimingFunction(name: .easeInEaseOut)
    transition.type = .push
    transition.subtype = .fromLeft
    view.layer.add(transition, forKey: nil)
    popViewController(animated: false)
  }
}

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 27 '13 at 10:27

0

Found another great resource to help out:

http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/custom-uiviewcontroller-transitions

Using iOS7 TLTransitionAnimator to create custom animations

answered Sep 27 '13 at 10:27

Bart van den Berg

596
1
7
10

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Nov 22 '13 at 07:29

I voted for @Arne's answer, because I find it the most elegant solution to this problem. I would just like to add some code in order to answer to @Bill's problem from his comment on @Arne's solution. Here's comment quote:

Thanks, this works for me. However, when the user taps the Back button, it reverts to the busted animation (because the back button doesn't call popViewControllerRetro). – Bill Oct 3 at 12:36

In order to call popViewControllerRetro when back button is pressed, there's a small hack you can perform in order to achieve this. Go into your pushed view controller, import UIViewController+Retro.h and add this code in your viewWillDisappear method:

- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
    if ([self.navigationController.viewControllers indexOfObject:self] == NSNotFound) {
        [self.navigationController popViewControllerRetro];
    }

    [super viewWillDisappear:animated];
}

This if statement will detect when Back button is pressed and will call popViewControllerRetro from category class.

Best regards.

Restore pre-iOS7 UINavigationController pushViewController animation

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