UIModalPresentationFormSheet with transparent background? - ios

Question

Essentially here I want the modal form sheet to be transparent so I can see the UIView behind it (it's fullscreen).
Is this possible? Setting the UIView to not opaque and a backgroundColor of [UIColor clearColor] doesn't work.
I've noticed when I switch from UIModalPresentationFormSheet to another presentation style my view's background is indeed transparent.
Where have I gone wrong?

Answer 1

This worked for me:
[modalView.superview setBackgroundcolor:[UIColor clearColor]];
It'll still dim the background view transparently, but won't cover it with solid gray.
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UPDATE FOR iOS 8
My previous solution no longer works for iOS 8.
There are a lot of steps to get something like this to work for iOS 8. So I've created a nice reusable solution: ModalController
https://github.com/koreyhinton/ModalController.
It's real easy to use and auto-dismisses itself.
let modal = ModalController()
modal.content = myCustomView
presentViewController(modal, animated: true, completion: nil)
If you are interested in implementation details, this is how I did it:
Make your modal view controller take up the whole screen and the main view's background will be toggled between clear and semi-dark. You will then have a content view that will be the modal which will be centered with a solid background color. I also use presentation style: .OverCurrentContext which I assign in the init method.
var content = UIView()
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
view.backgroundColor = UIColor.clearColor()
content.frame = CGRect(x:0, y:0, width:300, height:300)
content.backgroundColor = UIColor.blackColor()
view.addSubview(content)
}
override func viewDidAppear(animated: Bool) {
super.viewDidAppear(animated)
view.backgroundColor = UIColor.blackColor().colorWithAlphaComponent(0.7)
}
override func viewWillDisappear(animated: Bool) {
super.viewWillDisappear(animated)
view.backgroundColor = UIColor.clearColor()
}
override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()
content!.center = view.center
}

Answer 2

As far as I can tell this is no longer possible. It used to be but Apple has disabled this functionality.
What I've done instead is to just create my UIViews like normal and add them as subviews to my main view. I have to dismiss my form sheet and then do this presentation.