UISearchController: show results even when search bar is empty

Question

As I understand, the default behaviour of UISearchController is:

1. On tapping search bar, background is dimmed and \'cancel\' button is shown.

Answer 1

I think you are mistaken.

SearchResultsController only appears when there are results. This is slightly different than your interpretation.

The results are loaded manually based on the text in the search bar. So you can intercept it if the search bar is empty and return your own set of results.

Answer 2

If you don't want to dim the results, set the dimsBackgroundDuringPresentation property to false.

This will make sure that the underlying content is not dimmed during a search.

You will also have to make sure you return results even when the searchText is empty otherwise an empty tableview will be displayed.