Focus disappearing when opening a UIAlertController on tvOS 10 GM

Question

I want to display a UIAlertController on top of a UIViewController with a UICollectionView inside. The collection view needs to focus on startup, so I overrode the preferredFocusableView variable as follows:

override var preferredFocusedView: UIView? {
    return self.collectionView
}

With tvOS 9 all worked fine: the alert controller opened properly and I was able to choose one of the UIAlertActions displayed.

On tvOS 10 Golden Master, after opening the alert controller and scrolling to another action, the focus disappears from the screen and I'm unable to scroll to other actions or tapping on the Menu button of the Siri Remote. The app remains stuck in the alert controller and I can hear the scrolling sound when I try to scroll to other actions but nothing happens on screen. I have to force quit the app and reopen it.

This is the code of the app. I tried to set the preferredFocusableView to alertController.preferredFocusedView or by removing the focus methods of the collection view but with no results.

var alertController : UIAlertController?

func showAlert() {

    alertController = UIAlertController(title:"Example title", message: "Example description", preferredStyle: .Alert)

    let action1 = UIAlertAction(title: "Option 1", style: .Default) { (action : UIAlertAction) -> Void in
        //call to another method
    }

    // action2, action3, action4...

    let action5 = UIAlertAction(title: "Option 5", style: .Default) { (action : UIAlertAction) -> Void in
        //call to another method
    }

    let actionDismiss = UIAlertAction(title: "Dismiss", style: .Destructive) { (action : UIAlertAction) -> Void in
        self.alertController!.dismissViewControllerAnimated(true, completion: nil)
    }

    alertController!.addAction(action1)
    alertController!.addAction(action2)
    alertController!.addAction(action3)
    alertController!.addAction(action4)
    alertController!.addAction(action5)
    alertController!.addAction(actionDismiss)

    alertController!.preferredAction = action1

    self.presentViewController(alertController!, animated: true, completion: nil)
}

override var preferredFocusedView: UIView? {
    if self.alertController != nil {
        return self.alertController!.preferredFocusedView
    } else {
        return self.collectionView
    }
}

@DanielStorm when the user taps with the remote on a button inside the view controller — Nicola Giancecchi, Sep 12 '16 at 12:52
preferredFocusedView was deprecated in tvOS10 https://developer.apple.com/reference/uikit/uifocusenvironment/1616830-preferredfocusedview — Roman Podymov, Sep 14 '16 at 12:16

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 27 '16 at 07:16

Apple just replied to my radar:

Inside the attached application, you’re overwriting the functionality of UIScrollView in an extension to return true for canBecomeFocused(), which is the cause of these unexpected side effects. The focus seems to be disappearing when moving to a second UIAlertController option; however, it is actually transferring focus to the scroll view wrapped around the various components of the UIAlertController, since this is now allowed due to the extension mentioned above.

To solve this, create a custom subclass of UIScrollView to be used only in the instances where canBecomeFocused() must return true.

Daniel Storm · Answer 2 · 2016-09-12T13:14:02.120

1

You're overriding the entire systems focus engine. Try this:

// MARK: - Update Focus Helper
var viewToFocus: UIView? = nil {
    didSet {
        if viewToFocus != nil {
            self.setNeedsFocusUpdate()
            self.updateFocusIfNeeded()
        }
    }
}

override weak var preferredFocusedView: UIView? {
    if viewToFocus != nil {
        return viewToFocus
    } else {
        return super.preferredFocusedView
    }
}

Then set your alert as the view when you want the focus to change to it:

viewToFocus = someView

edited Sep 12 '16 at 13:14

answered Sep 12 '16 at 12:57

Daniel Storm

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Still not working :( I'm setting the focus after the presentation of the UIAlertController. The two methods work correctly but the focus still disappear. – Nicola Giancecchi Sep 12 '16 at 13:08

Focus disappearing when opening a UIAlertController on tvOS 10 GM

2 Answers2