How to customize / style a UIPopoverController

Question

I\'m working on an iPad application and I\'m using UIPopoverControllers. I\'m at the part where the app needs to be branded and styled and i\'m wondering how to change the c

Answer 1

Throwing my hat in here;

I've leveraged UIPopoverBackgroundViews in iOS 5+ to add a simple tintColor property onto UIPopoverControllers.

PCPopoverController: https://github.com/pcperini/PCPopoverController

Answer 2

You can use Elegant Popover cocoapod for just that. You can customise shape and colour of the arrow and the popover itself. Also, you can add colourful borders to the popover.

Answer 3

This is possible starting in iOS 5.0 by subclassing the abstract class UIPopoverBackgroundView and assigning your subclass to the popoverBackgroundViewClass property on your UIPopoverController instance. Unfortunately there is no tintColor property as the popover needs to use images for it's arrow and border in order to achieve smooth animations during dynamic resizing. You can learn more about how to customize the appearance of a UIPopoverController in the UIPopoverBackgroundView Class Reference

Answer 4

I know this is a lousy constructed answer, but I've just been playing with the UIPopoverController's views. They do exist.

The only way to access them is from your view that is sitting in the UIPopovercontroller.

I have a navigation controller so I follow this hierarchy

UIView *test = ((UIView *)[[[self.navigationController.view.superview.superview.subviews objectAtIndex:0] subviews] objectAtIndex:1]);
UIView *test2 = ((UIView *)[[[self.navigationController.view.superview.superview.subviews objectAtIndex:0] subviews] objectAtIndex:1]);
test.backgroundColor = [UIColor greenColor];
test2.backgroundColor = [UIColor greenColor];

This isn't exactly the end goal, but it is really close.

you'll find that the_view_in_the_popover.superview.superview (maybe just one superview if you are not reaching out from a navigation controller view) is a UIPopoverView. If you cast it as a UIView and treat it as a UIView you're not really breaking any rules. I guess that is really up to apple though.

Answer 5

iOS 7 introduces backgroundColor property of UIPopoverController which affects/includes the navigation background color as well as arrows of popover.

@property (nonatomic, copy) UIColor *backgroundColor NS_AVAILABLE_IOS(7_0);

Usage example:

    if ([self.popoverVC respondsToSelector:@selector(setBackgroundColor:)]) {   // Check to avoid app crash prior to iOS 7
        self.popoverVC.backgroundColor = [UIColor greenColor];   // [UIColor colorWithPatternImage:@"..."] doesn't reflect the color on simulator but on device it works!
    }

Note - As of now (iOS 7.0.3), in some cases (like set color using colorWithPatternImage:), the simulator (and even some devices) doesn't honor the color.

Answer 6

I try to trick it by customizing the view controller inside the popover and then hiding the popover border using this code:

UIView * border = [[insideViewController.view.superview.superview.superview subviews] objectAtIndex:0];  
border.hidden = YES;

The app is actually still in development so I'm hoping other people will comment on this solution.