iOS 6: How do I restrict some views to portrait and allow others to rotate?

Question

I have an iPhone app that uses a UINavigationController to present a drill-down interface: First one view, then another, up to four levels deep. I want the first three views restricted to portrait orientation and only the last view should be allowed to rotate to landscape. When returning from the fourth view to the third and the fourth view was in landscape orientation I want everything to rotate back to portrait.

In iOS 5 I simply defined shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation: in each of my view controllers to return YES for the allowable orientations. Everything worked as described above, including the return to portrait even if the device was being held in landscape orientation when returning from view controller #4 to #3.

In iOS 6 all view controllers rotate to landscape, breaking those that weren't meant to. The iOS 6 release notes say

More responsibility is moving to the app and the app delegate. Now, iOS containers (such as UINavigationController) do not consult their children to determine whether they should autorotate. [...] The system asks the top-most full-screen view controller (typically the root view controller) for its supported interface orientations whenever the device rotates or whenever a view controller is presented with the full-screen modal presentation style. Moreover, the supported orientations are retrieved only if this view controller returns YES from its shouldAutorotate method. [...] The system determines whether an orientation is supported by intersecting the value returned by the app’s supportedInterfaceOrientationsForWindow: method with the value returned by the supportedInterfaceOrientations method of the top-most full-screen controller.

So I subclassed UINavigationController, gave my MainNavigationController a boolean property landscapeOK and used this to return the allowable orientations in supportedInterfaceOrientations. Then in each of my view controllers' viewWillAppear: methods I have a line like this

    [(MainNavigationController*)[self navigationController] setLandscapeOK:YES];

to tell my MainNavigationController the desired behavior.

Here comes the question: If I now navigate to my fourth view in portrait mode and turn the phone over it rotates to landscape. Now I press the back button to return to my third view which is supposed to work portrait only. But it doesn't rotate back. How do I make it do that?

I tried

    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait]

in the viewWillAppear method of my third view controller, but it doesn't do anything. Is this the wrong method to call or maybe the wrong place to call it or should I be implementing the whole thing in a totally different way?

Answer 1

I had the same problem and found a solution that works for me. To make it work, it is not sufficient to implement - (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations in your UINavigationController. You also need to implement this method in your controller #3, which is the first one to be portrait-only after popping controller #4. So, I have the following code in my UINavigationController:

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotate
{
    return YES;
}

- (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations
{
    if (self.isLandscapeOK) {
        // for iPhone, you could also return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAllButUpsideDown
        return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAll;
    }
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskPortrait;
}

In view controller #3, add the following:

- (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations
{
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskPortrait;
}

You don't need to add anything to your view controllers #1, #2, and #4. This works for me, I hope it will help you.

Answer 2

Add a CustomNavigationController

Override these methods in it:

-(BOOL)shouldAutorotate
{
    return [[self.viewControllers lastObject] shouldAutorotate];
}

-(NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations
{
    return [[self.viewControllers lastObject] supportedInterfaceOrientations];
}

- (UIInterfaceOrientation)preferredInterfaceOrientationForPresentation
{
    return [[self.viewControllers lastObject] preferredInterfaceOrientationForPresentation];
}

Now add all orientations in the plist

In the view controller add only the required ones:

-(BOOL)shouldAutorotate
{
    return YES;
}

-(NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations
{
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskPortrait;
}

these methods override the navigation controller methods

Answer 3

After looking through every answer in countless similar questions on SO, none of the answers worked for me, but they did give me some ideas. Here's how I ended up solving the problem:

First, make sure your Supported Interface Orientations in your project's target contain all orientations that you want for your rotating view.

Next, make a category of UINavigationController (since Apple says not to subclass it):

@implementation UINavigationController (iOS6AutorotationFix)

-(BOOL)shouldAutorotate {
    return [self.topViewController shouldAutorotate];
}

@end

Import that category and the view controller that you want to be able to rotate (which I'll call RotatingViewController) to your highest level view controller, which should contain your navigation controller. In that view controller, implement shouldAutorotate as follows. Note that this should not be the same view controller that you want to rotate.

-(BOOL)shouldAutorotate {

    BOOL shouldRotate = NO;

    if ([navigationController.topViewController isMemberOfClass:[RotatingViewController class]] ) {
        shouldRotate = [navigationController.topViewController shouldAutorotate];
    }

    return shouldRotate;
}

Finally, in your RotatingViewController, implement shouldAutorotate and supportedInterfaceOrientations as follows:

-(BOOL)shouldAutorotate {
    // Preparations to rotate view go here
    return YES;
}

-(NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations {
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAllButUpsideDown; // or however you want to rotate
}

The reason you need to do this is because iOS 6 gives control of rotation to the root view controller instead of the top view controlller. If you want an individual view's rotation to behave differently than other views in the stack, you need to write a specific case for it in the root view controller.

Answer 4

I don't have enough reputation to comment on @Brian's answer so I'll add my note here.

Brian mentioned that iOS6 gives the rotation control to the rootViewController - this could not only be a UINavigationController as mentioned but also a UITabBarController, which it was for me. My structure looks like this:

• UITabBarController
  • UINavigationController
    • UIViewControllers ...
  • UINavigationController
    • UIViewControllers ...

So I added the methods first in a custom UITabBarController, then in a custom UINavigationController and then lastly in the specific UIViewController.

Example from the UITabBarController and UINavigationController:

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotate {
    return [self.viewControllers.lastObject shouldAutorotate];
}

- (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations {
    return [self.viewControllers.lastObject supportedInterfaceOrientations];
}

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientation {
    return [self.viewControllers.lastObject shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:toInterfaceOrientation];
}

- (UIInterfaceOrientation)preferredInterfaceOrientationForPresentation {
    return [self.viewControllers.lastObject preferredInterfaceOrientationForPresentation];
}

Answer 5

I'd like to give a partial answer to my own question. I found the following line of code, used in the viewWillAppear method of my third UIViewController, to work:

[[UIDevice currentDevice] 
      performSelector:NSSelectorFromString(@"setOrientation:") 
           withObject:(id)UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait];

But I don't really like this solution. It is using a trick to assign to a read-only property which according to Apple documentation represents the physical orientation of the device. It's like telling the iPhone to jump to the correct orientation in the hand of the user.

I am very tempted to leave this in my app since it simply works. But it doesn't feel right so I'd like to leave the question open for a clean solution.

Answer 6

This is I am using for orientation support in ios 6.0

-(BOOL)shouldAutorotate{
    return YES;
}  

 - (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations{
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAll;
}


- (UIInterfaceOrientation)preferredInterfaceOrientationForPresentation{  
  return UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait;
}

Answer 7

Being that this is a highly viewed thread. I thought I would add what I believe is the easiest answer. This works for ios8 and up

-(BOOL)shouldAutorotate
{
    return YES;
}

and

-(UIInterfaceOrientationMask)supportedInterfaceOrientations{
return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskPortrait;
}

That's it. Enjoy!

Oh, and my ViewControllers are embedded in a navigation controller, which I did not need to subclass or configure in any way.

Answer 8

You want to Force iOS 6 app portrait only then you can add to a UIViewController subclass below methods

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotate {
    if (UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad) {
        return YES;
    } else {
        return NO;
    }
}


- (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations {
    if (UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad) {
        return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAll;
    } else {
        return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskPortrait;
    }
}

Answer 9

This might not work for everyone, but it works great for me. Instead of implementing...

[(MainNavigationController*)[self navigationController] setLandscapeOK:YES];

in viewWillAppear in all of my controllers, I decided to centralize this process inside of my UINavigationController subclass by overriding the UINavigationControllerDelegate method navigationController:willShowViewController:animated:

- (void)navigationController:(UINavigationController *)navigationController willShowViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController animated:(BOOL)animated {

    self.previousVCLandscapeOK = self.isLandscapeOK; // Store the current VC's orientation preference before pushing on the new VC so we can set this again from within the custom "back" method
    self.isLandscapeOK = NO; // Set NO as default for all VC's
    if ([viewController isKindOfClass:[YourViewController class]]) {
        self.isLandscapeOK = YES;
    }
}

I have found that this delegate method doesn't get called when popping a VC off of the nav stack. This wasn't an issue for me because I am handling the back functionality from within my UINavigationController subclass so that I can set the proper navigation bar buttons and actions for specific VC's like this...

if ([viewController isKindOfClass:[ShareViewController class]]) {

    UIButton* backButton = [[UIButton alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 57, 30)];
    [backButton setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"back-arrow"] forState:UIControlStateNormal];
    [backButton addTarget:self action:@selector(back) forControlEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];
    UIBarButtonItem* backButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithCustomView:backButton];
    viewController.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = backButtonItem;

    UIImageView* shareTitle = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"share-title"]];
    [shareTitle setContentMode:UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit];
    [shareTitle setFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, shareTitle.frame.size.width - 10, shareTitle.frame.size.height - 10)];
    viewController.navigationItem.titleView = shareTitle;

} else if(...) {
    ...
}

Here is what my back method looks like to handle popping the VC off of the stack and to set the appropriate rotation preference...

- (void)back {
    self.isLandscapeOK = self.previousVCLandscapeOK;
    self.previousVCLandscapeOK = NO;
    [self popViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}

So, as you can see, basically all that is happening is I'm first setting me two properties...

@property (nonatomic) BOOL isLandscapeOK;
@property (nonatomic) BOOL previousVCLandscapeOK;

in navigationController:willShowViewController:animated: which will determine what the supported orientations are within that VC that is about to be presented. When popping a VC, my custom "back" method is being called and I'm then setting the isLandscapeOK to what was stored via the previousVCLandscapeOK value.

As I said, this might not work for everyone, but it works great for me and I don't have to worry about adding code to each of my view controllers, I was able to keep it all centralized in the UINavigationController subclass.

Hope this helps someone as it did me. Thanks, Jeremy.

Answer 10

Go to you Info.plist file and make the change

Answer 11

I wanted to have all my VCs locked to portrait orientation except one. This is what worked for me.

1. Add support for all orientations in the plist file.

2. In the root view controller, detect the kind of view controller thats on top of the window and set the orientation of the app accordingly in the supportedInterfaceOrientations method. For example, I needed my app to rotate only when the webview was on top of the stack. Here's what I added in my rootVC :

   -(NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations
   {
       UIViewController *topMostViewController = [[Utils getAppDelegate] appNavigationController].topViewController;
       if ([topMostViewController isKindOfClass:[SVWebViewController class]]) {
           return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAllButUpsideDown;
       }
       return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskPortrait;
   }
   

Answer 12

I don't have enough reputation to answer @Ram S question under @micmdk reply so I'll add my note here.

When you use UITabbarController, try to change self.viewControllers.lastObject in @micmdk's code to self.selectedViewController like this:

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotate {
    return [self.selectedViewController shouldAutorotate];
}

- (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations {
    return [self.selectedViewController supportedInterfaceOrientations];
}

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)toInterfaceOrientation {
    return [self.selectedViewController shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:toInterfaceOrientation];
}

- (UIInterfaceOrientation)preferredInterfaceOrientationForPresentation {
    return [self.selectedViewController preferredInterfaceOrientationForPresentation];
}

Answer 13

I've solved the same kind of issue.

If you are using the UINavigationController to push the view controllers, you have to set the methods below.

extension UINavigationController{

    override open var shouldAutorotate: Bool {

        if topViewController != nil && (topViewController?.isKind(of: LogInViewController.self))!
        {
            return true
        }
        return false
    }

    override open var supportedInterfaceOrientations: UIInterfaceOrientationMask {

        if topViewController != nil && (topViewController?.isKind(of: LogInViewController.self))!
        {
            return .portrait
        }
        return .landscapeRight

    }
    override open var preferredInterfaceOrientationForPresentation: UIInterfaceOrientation {

        if topViewController != nil && (topViewController?.isKind(of: LogInViewController.self))!
        {
            return .portrait
        }
        return .landscapeRight
    }
}

In place of LoginViewController use which UIViewController you want show. In my case, I want to show the LoginViewController in the Portrait mode other ViewControllers in landscape mode.

Answer 14

You can implement and override shouldAutorotate() and supportedInterfaceOrientations var in all of your View Controller classes that should be presented in a different orientations than ones defined in PLIST of your app.

However, in a nontrivial User Interface you might face a problem to add it in dozens of classes and you do not want to make all of them subclass of several common that supports it (MyBaseTableViewController, MyBaseNavigationController and MyBaseTabBarController).

Since you cannot override those method/var on UIViewController directly, you may do that on its subclasses that are typically base classes of yours like UITableViewController, UINavigationController and UITabBarController.

So you may implement a few extensions and still setup MyPreciousViewController to show in a different orientations than all others like this Swift 4 code snippet:

extension UITableViewController {
    override open var supportedInterfaceOrientations: UIInterfaceOrientationMask {

    if let last = self.navigationController?.childViewControllers.last,
        last != self {
            return last.supportedInterfaceOrientations
    } else {
        return [.portrait]
    }
    }
}

extension MyPreciousViewController {
    override open var supportedInterfaceOrientations: UIInterfaceOrientationMask {

    return [.portrait,.landscape]
    }
}


extension UINavigationController {
    override open var supportedInterfaceOrientations: UIInterfaceOrientationMask {

        return [.portrait]
    }
}


extension UITabBarController {
    override open var supportedInterfaceOrientations: UIInterfaceOrientationMask {

        return [.portrait]
    }
}

Answer 15

Please use the following method to solve this issue

- (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations
{
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskPortrait;
}

return only the orientation you want!!!