How to present UIAlertController when not in a view controller?

At WWDC, I stopped in at one of the labs and asked an Apple Engineer this same question: "What was the best practice for displaying a UIAlertController?" And he said they had been getting this question a lot and we joked that they should have had a session on it. He said that internally Apple is creating a UIWindow with a transparent UIViewController and then presenting the UIAlertController on it. Basically what is in Dylan Betterman's answer.

But I didn't want to use a subclass of UIAlertController because that would require me changing my code throughout my app. So with the help of an associated object, I made a category on UIAlertController that provides a show method in Objective-C.

Here is the relevant code:

#import "UIAlertController+Window.h"
#import <objc/runtime.h>

@interface UIAlertController (Window)

- (void)show;
- (void)show:(BOOL)animated;

@end

@interface UIAlertController (Private)

@property (nonatomic, strong) UIWindow *alertWindow;

@end

@implementation UIAlertController (Private)

@dynamic alertWindow;

- (void)setAlertWindow:(UIWindow *)alertWindow {
    objc_setAssociatedObject(self, @selector(alertWindow), alertWindow, OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN_NONATOMIC);
}

- (UIWindow *)alertWindow {
    return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, @selector(alertWindow));
}

@end

@implementation UIAlertController (Window)

- (void)show {
    [self show:YES];
}

- (void)show:(BOOL)animated {
    self.alertWindow = [[UIWindow alloc] initWithFrame:[UIScreen mainScreen].bounds];
    self.alertWindow.rootViewController = [[UIViewController alloc] init];

    id<UIApplicationDelegate> delegate = [UIApplication sharedApplication].delegate;
    // Applications that does not load with UIMainStoryboardFile might not have a window property:
    if ([delegate respondsToSelector:@selector(window)]) {
        // we inherit the main window's tintColor
        self.alertWindow.tintColor = delegate.window.tintColor;
    }

    // window level is above the top window (this makes the alert, if it's a sheet, show over the keyboard)
    UIWindow *topWindow = [UIApplication sharedApplication].windows.lastObject;
    self.alertWindow.windowLevel = topWindow.windowLevel + 1;

    [self.alertWindow makeKeyAndVisible];
    [self.alertWindow.rootViewController presentViewController:self animated:animated completion:nil];
}

- (void)viewDidDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewDidDisappear:animated];
    
    // precaution to ensure window gets destroyed
    self.alertWindow.hidden = YES;
    self.alertWindow = nil;
}

@end

Here is a sample usage:

// need local variable for TextField to prevent retain cycle of Alert otherwise UIWindow
// would not disappear after the Alert was dismissed
__block UITextField *localTextField;
UIAlertController *alert = [UIAlertController alertControllerWithTitle:@"Global Alert" message:@"Enter some text" preferredStyle:UIAlertControllerStyleAlert];
[alert addAction:[UIAlertAction actionWithTitle:@"OK" style:UIAlertActionStyleDefault handler:^(UIAlertAction *action) {
    NSLog(@"do something with text:%@", localTextField.text);
// do NOT use alert.textfields or otherwise reference the alert in the block. Will cause retain cycle
}]];
[alert addTextFieldWithConfigurationHandler:^(UITextField *textField) {
    localTextField = textField;
}];
[alert show];

The UIWindow that is created will be destroyed when the UIAlertController is dealloced, since it is the only object that is retaining the UIWindow. But if you assign the UIAlertController to a property or cause its retain count to increase by accessing the alert in one of the action blocks, the UIWindow will stay on screen, locking up your UI. See the sample usage code above to avoid in the case of needing to access UITextField.

I made a GitHub repo with a test project: FFGlobalAlertController

Swift

let alertController = UIAlertController(title: "title", message: "message", preferredStyle: .alert)
//...
var rootViewController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.rootViewController
if let navigationController = rootViewController as? UINavigationController {
    rootViewController = navigationController.viewControllers.first
}
if let tabBarController = rootViewController as? UITabBarController {
    rootViewController = tabBarController.selectedViewController
}
//...
rootViewController?.present(alertController, animated: true, completion: nil)

Objective-C

UIAlertController *alertController = [UIAlertController alertControllerWithTitle:@"Title" message:@"message" preferredStyle:UIAlertControllerStyleAlert];
//...
id rootViewController = [UIApplication sharedApplication].delegate.window.rootViewController;
if([rootViewController isKindOfClass:[UINavigationController class]])
{
    rootViewController = ((UINavigationController *)rootViewController).viewControllers.firstObject;
}
if([rootViewController isKindOfClass:[UITabBarController class]])
{
    rootViewController = ((UITabBarController *)rootViewController).selectedViewController;
}
//...
[rootViewController presentViewController:alertController animated:YES completion:nil];

You can do the following with Swift 2.2:

let alertController: UIAlertController = ...
UIApplication.sharedApplication().keyWindow?.rootViewController?.presentViewController(alertController, animated: true, completion: nil)

And Swift 3.0:

let alertController: UIAlertController = ...
UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.rootViewController?.present(alertController, animated: true, completion: nil)

I posted a similar question a couple months ago and think I've finally solved the problem. Follow the link at the bottom of my post if you just want to see the code.

The solution is to use an additional UIWindow.

When you want to display your UIAlertController:

1. Make your window the key and visible window (window.makeKeyAndVisible())
2. Just use a plain UIViewController instance as the rootViewController of the new window. (window.rootViewController = UIViewController())
3. Present your UIAlertController on your window's rootViewController

A couple things to note:

• Your UIWindow must be strongly referenced. If it's not strongly referenced it will never appear (because it is released). I recommend using a property, but I've also had success with an associated object.
• To ensure that the window appears above everything else (including system UIAlertControllers), I set the windowLevel. (window.windowLevel = UIWindowLevelAlert + 1)

Lastly, I have a completed implementation if you just want to look at that.

https://github.com/dbettermann/DBAlertController

Pretty generic UIAlertController extension for all cases of UINavigationController and/or UITabBarController. Also works if there's a modal VC on screen at the moment.

Usage:

//option 1:
myAlertController.show()
//option 2:
myAlertController.present(animated: true) {
    //completion code...
}

This is the extension:

//Uses Swift1.2 syntax with the new if-let
// so it won't compile on a lower version.
extension UIAlertController {

    func show() {
        present(animated: true, completion: nil)
    }

    func present(#animated: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)?) {
        if let rootVC = UIApplication.sharedApplication().keyWindow?.rootViewController {
            presentFromController(rootVC, animated: animated, completion: completion)
        }
    }

    private func presentFromController(controller: UIViewController, animated: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)?) {
        if  let navVC = controller as? UINavigationController,
            let visibleVC = navVC.visibleViewController {
                presentFromController(visibleVC, animated: animated, completion: completion)
        } else {
          if  let tabVC = controller as? UITabBarController,
              let selectedVC = tabVC.selectedViewController {
                presentFromController(selectedVC, animated: animated, completion: completion)
          } else {
              controller.presentViewController(self, animated: animated, completion: completion)
          }
        }
    }
}