Edit button not displayed in UITabBarController's MoreNavigationController

Question

A UITabBarController is being pushed onto the stack:

let presenter = presentingViewController as! UINavigationController
let tabvc = UITabBarCo         


        

Answer 1

You can have both a UINavigationController and a UITabBarController ; using Storyboard helps understand the issue better, any of these solutions will work:

1. Start out with a UITabBarController as initial view controller
2. Use presentViewController instead of pushViewController
3. Use a modal Storyboard segue to perform a modal presentation
4. Swap out the rootViewController dynamically

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Initial View Controller Design

When the Tab Bar Controller is initial View Controller, the Edit button is displayed normally.

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Pushed Design

Another Navigation Controller is initial View Controller, using one of 5 adaptive Action Segue:

• Show
• Custom

-> No Edit button, since it is in direct conflict with the parent UITableViewController.

• Show Detail
• Present Modally
• Popover Presentation

-> Edit button displayed as expected.

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Code

1. Program Modal

Using the exact code presented in the question, change the last line:

let presenter = presentingViewController as! UINavigationController
let tabvc = UITabBarController()
tabvc.viewControllers = vcs
tabvc.customizableViewControllers = vcs
presenter.presentViewController(tabvc, animated: true, completion: nil)

2. Storyboard Modal

keeping with the Storyboard theme, create a segue of the correct type, assign an identifier (i.e. presentModallySegue) and the 5 lines above become this single line:

self.performSegueWithIdentifier("presentModallySegue", sender: self)

3. root Swap

A more drastic solution involves swapping out the root view controller at the window level:

let tabvc = UITabBarController()
tabvc.viewControllers = vcs
tabvc.customizableViewControllers = vcs
self.view.window!.rootViewController = tabvc

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Conclusion

Either change your design to adopt the Tab Bar Controller as the initial View Controller, or present the Tab Bar Controller modally.