How to make UIPopoverController keep same position after rotating?

Question

I can\'t keep popover the same position on the screen after rotation. Is there any good way to do that, because just setting some frame to popover works terrible after rotating.

Answer 1

For iOS > 8 John Strickers answer helped but didn't do what I wanted it to do.

Here's the solution that worked for me. (If you want to download a full sample project it's here: https://github.com/appteur/uipopoverExample)

I created a property to hold any popover I wanted to present and also added a property to track the sourceRect and another for the view of the button I wanted the popover arrow to point at.

@property (nonatomic, weak) UIView *activePopoverBtn;
@property (nonatomic, strong) PopoverViewController *popoverVC;
@property (nonatomic, assign) CGRect sourceRect; 

The button that triggered my popover is in a UIToolbar. When tapped it runs the following method that creates and launches the popover.

-(void) buttonAction:(id)sender event:(UIEvent*)event
{
    NSLog(@"ButtonAction");

    // when the button is tapped we want to display a popover, so setup all the variables needed and present it here

    // get a reference to which button's view was tapped (this is to get 
    // the frame to update the arrow to later on rotation)
    // since UIBarButtonItems don't have a 'frame' property I found this way is easy
    UIView *buttonView          = [[event.allTouches anyObject] view];

    // set our tracker properties for when the orientation changes (handled in the viewWillTransitionToSize method above)
    self.activePopoverBtn       = buttonView;
    self.sourceRect             = buttonView.frame;

    // get our size, make it adapt based on our view bounds
    CGSize viewSize             = self.view.bounds.size;
    CGSize contentSize          = CGSizeMake(viewSize.width, viewSize.height - 100.0);

    // set our popover view controller property
    self.popoverVC = [[UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"Main" bundle:[NSBundle mainBundle]] instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"PopoverVC"];

    // configure using a convenience method (if you have multiple popovers this makes it faster with less code)
    [self setupPopover:self.popoverVC
        withSourceView:buttonView.superview // this will be the toolbar
            sourceRect:self.sourceRect
           contentSize:contentSize];

    [self presentViewController:self.popoverVC animated:YES completion:nil];

}

The 'setupPopover:withSourceView:sourceRect:contentSize method is simply a convenience method to set the popoverPresentationController properties if you plan to display multiple popovers and want them configured the same. It's implementation is below.

// convenience method in case you want to display multiple popovers
-(void) setupPopover:(UIViewController*)popover withSourceView:(UIView*)sourceView sourceRect:(CGRect)sourceRect contentSize:(CGSize)contentSize
{
    NSLog(@"\npopoverPresentationController: %@\n", popover.popoverPresentationController);

    popover.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationPopover;
    popover.popoverPresentationController.delegate = self;
    popover.popoverPresentationController.sourceView                = sourceView;
    popover.popoverPresentationController.sourceRect                = sourceRect;
    popover.preferredContentSize                                    = contentSize;
    popover.popoverPresentationController.permittedArrowDirections  = UIPopoverArrowDirectionDown;
    popover.popoverPresentationController.backgroundColor           = [UIColor whiteColor];
}

For iOS 8 and up the viewWillTransitionToSize:withTransitionCoordinator get's called on the view controller when the device rotates.

I implemented this method in my presenting view controller class as shown below.

// called when rotating a device
- (void)viewWillTransitionToSize:(CGSize)size withTransitionCoordinator:(id)coordinator
{
    NSLog(@"viewWillTransitionToSize [%@]", NSStringFromCGSize(size));

    // resizes popover to new size and arrow location on orientation change
    [coordinator animateAlongsideTransition:^(id  _Nonnull context)
    {
        if (self.popoverVC)
        {
            // get the new frame of our button (this is our new source rect)
            CGRect viewframe = self.activePopoverBtn ? self.activePopoverBtn.frame : CGRectZero;

            // update our popover view controller's sourceRect so the arrow will be pointed in the right place
            self.popoverVC.popoverPresentationController.sourceRect = viewframe;

            // update the preferred content size if we want to adapt the size of the popover to fit the new bounds
            self.popoverVC.preferredContentSize = CGSizeMake(self.view.bounds.size.width -20, self.view.bounds.size.height - 100);
        }

    } completion:^(id  _Nonnull context) {
        // anything you want to do when the transition completes
    }];
}