How to check iOS version?

Question

I want to check if the iOS version of the device is greater than 3.1.3 I tried things like:

[[UIDevice currentDevice].systemVersion         


        

Answer 1

Preferred Approach

In Swift 2.0 Apple added availability checking using a far more convenient syntax (Read more here). Now you can check the OS version with a cleaner syntax:

if #available(iOS 9, *) {
    // Then we are on iOS 9
} else {
    // iOS 8 or earlier
}

This is the preferred over checking respondsToSelector etc (What's New In Swift). Now the compiler will always warn you if you aren't guarding your code properly.

---

Pre Swift 2.0

New in iOS 8 is NSProcessInfo allowing for better semantic versioning checks.

Deploying on iOS 8 and greater

For minimum deployment targets of iOS 8.0 or above, use NSProcessInfo operatingSystemVersion or isOperatingSystemAtLeastVersion.

This would yield the following:

let minimumVersion = NSOperatingSystemVersion(majorVersion: 8, minorVersion: 1, patchVersion: 2)
if NSProcessInfo().isOperatingSystemAtLeastVersion(minimumVersion) {
    //current version is >= (8.1.2)
} else {
    //current version is < (8.1.2)
}

Deploying on iOS 7

For minimum deployment targets of iOS 7.1 or below, use compare with NSStringCompareOptions.NumericSearch on UIDevice systemVersion.

This would yield:

let minimumVersionString = "3.1.3"
let versionComparison = UIDevice.currentDevice().systemVersion.compare(minimumVersionString, options: .NumericSearch)
switch versionComparison {
    case .OrderedSame, .OrderedDescending:
        //current version is >= (3.1.3)
        break
    case .OrderedAscending:
        //current version is < (3.1.3)
        fallthrough
    default:
        break;
}

More reading at NSHipster.