iOS 8 - UIWindow Orientation Is Always Portrait

Question

I am updating an iOS 6 app to iOS 8 (iPad), and any new UIWindows that I create are always showing up in Portrait mode. The app originally supported both the Portra

Answer 1

EDIT (July 2, 2015)

This answer breaks in iOS 8.3+ and possibly previous versions of iOS 8. I DO NOT recommend that anyone uses it, especially since it is not guaranteed to work in future iOS versions.

My new solution uses the standard presentViewController method of a UIViewController. I initialize a UIViewController, add my custom modal View as a subview of the UIViewController, and then position the modal View using constraints. Works like a charm!

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Original Answer

I left this for a while but decided to come back to it today. I ended up rotating the modal window -90 degrees since it is automatically rotated 90 degrees to be displayed in portrait. I also added a small calculation for the modal window's width and height to support both iOS 7 and iOS 8. Here is my new code:

// Get the screen size
var screenSize:CGSize = UIScreen.mainScreen().bounds.size

// Use the larger value of the width and the height since the width should be larger in Landscape
// This is needed to support iOS 7 since iOS 8 changed how the screen bounds are calculated
var widthToUse:CGFloat = (screenSize.width > screenSize.height) ? screenSize.width : screenSize.height

// Use the remaining value (width or height) as the height
var heightToUse:CGFloat = (widthToUse == screenSize.width ? screenSize.height : screenSize.width)

// Create a new modal window, which will take up the entire space of the screen
var modalWindow:UIWindow = UIWindow(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: widthToUse, height: heightToUse))

modalWindow.backgroundColor = UIColor.blackColor().colorWithAlphaComponent(0.66)
modalWindow.hidden = false
modalWindow.windowLevel = (UIWindowLevelStatusBar + 1)

modalWindow.addSubview(customView)    

// Create a -90 degree transform since the modal is always displayed in portrait for some reason
var newTransform:CGAffineTransform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(CGFloat(-M_PI / 2))

// Set the transform on the modal window
modalWindow.transform = newTransform

// Set the X and Y position of the modal window to 0
modalWindow.frame.origin.x = 0
modalWindow.frame.origin.y = 0

modalWindow.makeKeyAndVisible()

As stated, this works great on both iOS 7+ and iOS 8+! When working with subviews, note that the modal's width and height values are switched since it's displaying in portrait. So, if you want to center a subview horizontally, use the modal window's height and the subview's width instead of both views' width.