How to Remove a Previous ViewController

Question

I am a student and pretty new to programming. I am trying to learn Objective-C/Swift in my spare time. I made a game using spriteKit with swift that has multiple menus/scenes. <

Answer 1

First of all, you are using the modal presentation pattern, rather than a navigation stack pattern (UINavigationController). You can't get rid of the presenting view controller, nor should you, as it would break navigation.

The short answer here is that you don't need to worry about this. The amount of memory a view controller itself takes up is trivial and will be released automatically once there are no more references to it (one you dismiss it or pop it off a navigation stack).

The longer answer would depend on your specific implementation. If you are somehow in a situation where you infinitely increasing the size of a stack, then it is a problem. An example would be if you have a navigation flow where you can freely move between two "screens" but internally each screen keeps presenting a new one rather than just switching to an existing one. If you are experiencing something like this, then you would be best suited to using a UITabBarController or something similar, where you are able to navigate laterally between view controllers without creating new ones.