Tab Bar and UISearchController giving black screen

Question

I have two scenes which can be accessed through a tab bar, on scene 1 there is a search bar. the problem that I am facing is that while searching if I switch to the download

Answer 1

Behind the scenes the search controller is being presented. This is what is causing the black screen when returning.

Solution 1

The simplest way is to override UISearchController and set isActive=false in it's viewDidDisappear (https://stackoverflow.com/a/39212080/215748). It works, but I found some usability issues with this solution. I didn't pursue it, so they may be easy enough to overcome.

Solution 2

Call the following before moving away from the view controller:

searchController.dismiss(animated: false, completion: nil)

Add this to viewDidDisappear.

override func viewDidDisappear(_ animated: Bool) {
    super.viewDidDisappear(animated)
    dismissSearch()
}

func dismissSearch() {
    searchController.dismiss(animated: false, completion: nil)
}

Unfortunately, viewDidDisappear doesn't get called when you switch tabs, because the search controller is being presented. It received the viewDidDisappear. To get around this, you can subclass UITabBarController and implement UITabBarControllerDelegate.

// don't forget to set the delegate
extension TabBarController: UITabBarControllerDelegate {
    func tabBarController(_ tabBarController: UITabBarController, shouldSelect viewController: UIViewController) -> Bool {
        
        if let navigationController = viewControllers?[selectedIndex] as? UINavigationController {
            for myController in navigationController.viewControllers.flatMap({ $0 as? MyTableViewController }) {
                myController.dismissSearch()
            }
        }
        
        return true
    }