Getting reference to the top-most view/window in iOS application.

Question

I'm creating a reusable framework for displaying notifications in an iOS application. I'd like the notification views to be added over the top of everything else in the application, sort of like a UIAlertView. When I init the manager that listens for NSNotification events and adds views in response, I need to get a reference to the top-most view in the application. This is what I have at the moment:

_topView = [[[[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow] subviews] lastObject];

Would this work for any iOS application or is their a safer/better way to get the top view?

Answer 1

Usually that will give you the top view, but there's no guarantee that it's visible to the user. It could be off the screen, have an alpha of 0.0, or could be have size of 0x0 for example.

It could also be that the keyWindow has no subviews, so you should probably test for that first. This would be unusual, but it's not impossible.

UIWindow is a subclass of UIView, so if you want to make sure your notification is visible to the user, you can add it directly to the keyWindow using addSubview: and it will instantly be the top most view. I'm not sure if this is what you're looking to do though. (Based on your question, it looks like you already know this.)

Answer 2

Whenever I want to display some overlay on top of everything else, I just add it on top of the Application Window directly:

[[[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow] addSubview:someView]