How to present UIAlertController when not in a view controller?

Question

Scenario: The user taps on a button on a view controller. The view controller is the topmost (obviously) in the navigation stack. The tap invokes a utility class method call

Answer 1

For iOS 13, building on the answers by mythicalcoder and bobbyrehm:

In iOS 13, if you are creating your own window to present the alert in, you are required to hold a strong reference to that window or else your alert won't be displayed because the window will be immediately deallocated when its reference exits scope.

Furthermore, you'll need to set the reference to nil again after the alert is dismissed in order to remove the window to continue to allow user interaction on the main window below it.

You can create a UIViewController subclass to encapsulate the window memory management logic:

class WindowAlertPresentationController: UIViewController {

    // MARK: - Properties

    private lazy var window: UIWindow? = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds)
    private let alert: UIAlertController

    // MARK: - Initialization

    init(alert: UIAlertController) {

        self.alert = alert
        super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {

        fatalError("This initializer is not supported")
    }

    // MARK: - Presentation

    func present(animated: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)?) {

        window?.rootViewController = self
        window?.windowLevel = UIWindow.Level.alert + 1
        window?.makeKeyAndVisible()
        present(alert, animated: animated, completion: completion)
    }

    // MARK: - Overrides

    override func dismiss(animated flag: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)? = nil) {

        super.dismiss(animated: flag) {
            self.window = nil
            completion?()
        }
    }
}

You can use this as is, or if you want a convenience method on your UIAlertController, you can throw it in an extension:

extension UIAlertController {

    func presentInOwnWindow(animated: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)?) {

        let windowAlertPresentationController = WindowAlertPresentationController(alert: self)
        windowAlertPresentationController.present(animated: animated, completion: completion)
    }
}