How do I create a UIView with a transparent circle inside (in swift)?

Question

I want to create a view that looks like this:

I figure what I need is a uiview with some sort of

Answer 1

Updated again for Swift 4 & removed a few items to make the code tighter.

Please note that maskLayer.fillRule is set differently between Swift 4 and Swift 4.2.

func createOverlay(frame: CGRect,
                   xOffset: CGFloat,
                   yOffset: CGFloat,
                   radius: CGFloat) -> UIView {
    // Step 1
    let overlayView = UIView(frame: frame)
    overlayView.backgroundColor = UIColor.black.withAlphaComponent(0.6)
    // Step 2
    let path = CGMutablePath()
    path.addArc(center: CGPoint(x: xOffset, y: yOffset),
                radius: radius,
                startAngle: 0.0,
                endAngle: 2.0 * .pi,
                clockwise: false)
    path.addRect(CGRect(origin: .zero, size: overlayView.frame.size))
    // Step 3
    let maskLayer = CAShapeLayer()
    maskLayer.backgroundColor = UIColor.black.cgColor
    maskLayer.path = path
    // For Swift 4.0
    maskLayer.fillRule = kCAFillRuleEvenOdd
    // For Swift 4.2
    maskLayer.fillRule = .evenOdd
    // Step 4
    overlayView.layer.mask = maskLayer
    overlayView.clipsToBounds = true

    return overlayView
}

A rough breakdown on what is happening:

1. Create a view sized to the specified frame, with a black background set to 60% opacity
2. Create the path for drawing the circle using the provided starting point and radius
3. Create the mask for the area to remove
4. Apply the mask & clip to bounds

The following code snippet will call this and place a circle in the middle of the screen with radius of 50:

let overlay = createOverlay(frame: view.frame,
                            xOffset: view.frame.midX,
                            yOffset: view.frame.midY,
                            radius: 50.0)
view.addSubview(overlay)

Which looks like this: