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I've read many answers on SO but I can't seem to get autorotation working on iOS7.

I only need one view controller to rotate, so I don't want to set rotation settings in my Info.plist.

As I understand Apple's documentation, a single view controller can override global rotations settings (from Info.plist) by simply overriding two methods. Info.plist is set to only allow Portrait, and my view controller implements the following methods:

- (NSUInteger)supportedInterfaceOrientations
{
    NSLog(@"%s", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__);
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAllButUpsideDown;
}

- (BOOL)shouldAutorotate
{
    NSLog(@"%s", __PRETTY_FUNCTION__);
    return true;
}

I'm seeing those NSLog statements upon rotation but nothing rotates.

If I do configure Info.plist with the proper rotation settings, my view will rotate, but not if I try and rely on my view controller.

Not sure if it matters, but the view I'm trying to rotate is from a .xib using auto layout.

Also, my ViewController is being presented modally and is contained in a navigation controller. I've tried just presenting the view controller by itself and that doesn't work. I've also tried adding a category to UINavigationController to get it's autorotation directions from it's topViewController.

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djibouti33
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  • Same problem; in addition, I would like my app to be iOS5 compatible, so I can't use supportedInterfaceOrientations. I am using the other two functions: shouldAutorotate (returning NO) and shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation (although deprecated). They are not even called! It appears there is no way out! – Giorgio Barchiesi Jan 31 '14 at 09:15
  • I have finally given up... reviewed my xib so that the view appears in a somewhat reasonable way also in landscape orientation... :-( – Giorgio Barchiesi Jan 31 '14 at 09:27

5 Answers5

17

In my case, I had a new iOS7 app with about 30 view controllers created already. I needed auto rotation on just a single modal view controller. I didn't want to have to update the preexisting view controllers.

I selected the orientations I wanted in the plist:

select orientations

Then I added a category to my app delegate on UIViewController:

@implementation UIViewController (rotate)
   -(BOOL)shouldAutorotate {
      return NO;
   }
@end

Then in the single modal view controller I WANTED to rotate I added this method:

-(BOOL)shouldAutorotate {
      return YES;
}

I also discovered, that if my view controller wasn't a modal VC I would need to add category methods on UINavigationController instead, for all VCs that were subsequent to the root view controller, as part of the navigation stack of view controllers - similar to this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/20283331/396429

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Nate Flink
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    You should not use categories to override methods. The clean way of doing the exact same thing is creating a base class for all your UIViewControllers and override the method there. – Stoto Jun 29 '14 at 07:13
  • The whole point of my answer is to show how the objective is achievable without subclassing UIViewController. In some cases it isn't practical to do so – Nate Flink Jul 31 '14 at 21:30
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    @Nate, the whole point of your answer is incorrect, category cannot be used for this since your case is a particular one, when it works. When you override a method using a category there is no guarantee that it will actually override it, it can still pick the old one. – igrek Sep 25 '14 at 12:23
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    refer to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5272451/overriding-methods-using-categories-in-objective-c for more details – igrek Sep 25 '14 at 12:26
16

Simple but it work very fine. IOS 7.1 and 8

AppDelegate.h

@property () BOOL restrictRotation;

AppDelegate.m

-(NSUInteger)application:(UIApplication *)application supportedInterfaceOrientationsForWindow:(UIWindow *)window
{
if(self.restrictRotation)
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskPortrait;
else
    return UIInterfaceOrientationMaskAll;
}

ViewController

-(void) restrictRotation:(BOOL) restriction
{
    AppDelegate* appDelegate = (AppDelegate*)[UIApplication sharedApplication].delegate;
    appDelegate.restrictRotation = restriction;
}

viewDidLoad

[self restrictRotation:YES]; or NO
Alan10977
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  • That is the clever solution i find around there. i may add that if in the same stack, one view controller is not restricted, the rest of the view controller should have [self restrictRotation:YES]; in the viewWillAppear (for when you push back button.) thank you Alan ! you're the best. – Jeremy Luisetti Oct 28 '15 at 09:27
7

You need to set the plist value to all possible values, then limit them as you see fit (in the Navigation Controllers and TabBar Controllers. From the UIViewController class description:

In iOS 6 and later, your app supports the interface orientations defined in your app’s Info.plist file. A view controller can override the supportedInterfaceOrientations method to limit the list of supported orientations. Typically, the system calls this method only on the root view controller of the window or a view controller presented to fill the entire screen; child view controllers use the portion of the window provided for them by their parent view controller and no longer participate directly in decisions about what rotations are supported. The intersection of the app’s orientation mask and the view controller’s orientation mask is used to determine which orientations a view controller can be rotated into.

David H
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  • So you put the shouldautorotate and supportedinterfaceorientations in the view controller before the one you want to rotate one specific way or what? – jgvb Jan 30 '14 at 07:06
1

I've faced such problem - had only one landscape view in my app. I've used below code to to handle that.

#import "objc/message.h"
-(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated{

objc_msgSend([UIDevice currentDevice], @selector(setOrientation:), UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft);
}
McDowell
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user2557885
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0

I know this is old but I ended up in a more unique situation where we have 50+ ViewController all over the app that I refused to go through and modify and support the same orientation in all of them but one or 2. Which brings me to my answer. I created a UIViewController category that overrides - (BOOL)shouldAutorotate to always return NO or YES depending on device type etc. (this can be done with supported interface orientations too). Then on the ViewControllers I wanted to support more then just portrait, I swizzled shouldAutorotate to return YES. Then forced the orientation change when the view is dismissed on the parent ViewControllers viewWillAppear method using:

[[UIDevice currentDevice] setValue:@(UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait) forKey:@"orientation"].

When all was said and done, I accomplished everything I wanted on a few ViewControllers with < 30 lines of code using a macro for swizzling. Had I done it by replacing shouldAutorotate and supportedInterfaceOrientations on all of the VC's in the application I would have ~250 extra lines of code. and a lot of grunt work adding it in the first place.

Holyprin
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