UISearchBar wont remove UISearchBarBackground - ios

Question

I have tried EVERYTHING to get this to work. I setup a custom class like so.
override func layoutSubviews() {
super.layoutSubviews()
clearBackgroundColor() // function in the question
}
private func clearBackgroundColor() {
guard let UISearchBarBackground: AnyClass = NSClassFromString("UISearchBarBackground") else { return }
for view in self.subviews {
for subview in view.subviews {
if subview.isKind(of: UISearchBarBackground) {
subview.alpha = 0
}
}
}
}
I set backgroundColor, barTintColor to .clear. Style to minimal. Im losing my mind. I set breakpoints to make sure we are finding the search bar background. Ive tried subview.removeFromSuperview() as well. Nothing. I think Im going insane. Am I missing something?
This is on iOS 10 and am using storyboard. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I had to do this in a client's app a while ago. Here's what worked for me:
I had a UISearchBar subclass:
#property (nonatomic, strong) UITextField* textField;
I called the following from init:
self.textField = [self findViewOfClass:[UITextField class] inView:self];
self.translucent = NO;
self.barTintColor = ...;
self.textField.backgroundColor = ...;
- (id)findViewOfClass:(Class)class inView:(UIView*)view
{
if ([view isKindOfClass:class])
{
return view;
}
else
{
for (UIView* subview in view.subviews)
{
id foundView = [self findViewOfClass:class inView:subview];
if (foundView != nil)
{
return foundView;
}
}
}
return nil;
}
The essential part is finding the UITextField. (I did a similar thing to allow me to custom style the cancel button.) I vaguely remember that disabling translucent was really needed; easy to try.
That should be it. Let me know if this works for you.
I only have Obj-C code, but this is easy to convert.

Answer 2

I finally ignored previous answers from all the posts about this subject and did my own Debug View Hierarchy. I spotted a ImageView that serves as the background which I guess is now called "_UISearchBarSearchFieldBackgroundView". This helped me find a single function that fixes the problem at least for iOS 9+.
searchBar.setSearchFieldBackgroundImage(UIImage(), for: .normal)
One thing to note is that this isn't the only way to fix this problem. However, I used it because it requires no looping and because the image is empty the additional view is never added giving the same end result as other methods.
One thing to note is that this may only work for iOS 9+. So, your milage may vary. I tested with iOS 10 with a Deployment Target of 9.3.