UIPopoverController for iphone not working?

Question

I need to use a UIPopOverController for my iPhone app ,i searched stackoverflow someone said UIPopoverController does not run on iphone iphone device WHY?.when i run on ipho

Answer 1

This is a really interesting (and depressing) thread to read. I can't believe Apple prevents popup dialogs on iPhones, with absolutely no justification.

And, it's true, on iOS 8, if you try to work around this limitation, it'll make your popups appear as a full-screen modal dialog.

The following excellent webpage describes "How Apple Cheats" to let its own iBooks and iTunes apps break its own rules, and allow popups - but just from within their own iPhone apps.

HowAppleCheats

Have a read (warning: it'll make you hate Apple & XCode even more..)

Want to get around the "UIPopoverController called when not running under UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad" error on iOS 8 ?

Simple.

Just go into your .plist file, and change the Bundle ID to "com.apple.itunesu" to make XCode think that your app is actually iTunes.

Then your popup will work fine.

(Sigh.)

The alternative way of doing this is to directly add your UIViewController to your screen.

In this example, I wanted a "helper screen" to appear on top of my iPhone screen. It's a UIViewController, it is stored in it's own .xib file, and it has a few lines to add a pretty border:

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    // Give our popup a pretty curved border
    self.view.layer.borderColor = [[UIColor blueColor] CGColor];
    self.view.layer.borderWidth = 1.0;
    self.view.layer.cornerRadius = 8;    
}

To display it, I simply create an instance of this UIViewController, add it to my screen, then center it:

-(void)showHelperScreen
{
    if (self.helperScreen == nil)
    {
        //  Add the popup UIViewController to our screen
        self.helperScreen = [[HelperViewController alloc] init];
        [self.view addSubview:self.helperScreen.view];
    }

    //  Center the popup in the middle of the screen
    CGSize screenSize = [[UIScreen mainScreen] applicationFrame].size;
    self.helperScreen.view.center = CGPointMake(screenSize.width/2, screenSize.height/2);
}

Of course, I also needed to add some code to make the popup disappear when the user taps outside of it, but this does at least show that you can (safely) display popups on an iPhone, even if your app isn't specifically called iTunes or iBook.

Voila.

Hope this helps, and if anyone needs me, I'll be back in my safe, happy place (Visual Studio, in other words).

Answer 2

Use a custom popover controller, such as:

https://github.com/sammcewan/WYPopoverController

(this seems to be the best supported one that I have found).