How do I make a custom initializer for a UIViewController subclass in Swift?

class ViewController: UIViewController {
        
    var imageURL: NSURL?
    
    // this is a convenient way to create this view controller without a imageURL
    convenience init() {
        self.init(imageURL: nil)
    }
    
    init(imageURL: NSURL?) {
        self.imageURL = imageURL
        super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
    }
    
    // if this view controller is loaded from a storyboard, imageURL will be nil
    
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
    }
}

For those who write UI in code

class Your_ViewController : UIViewController {

    let your_property : String

    init(your_property: String) {
        self.your_property = your_property
        super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
    }

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

    }

    required init?(coder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) is not supported")
    }
}

This is very similar to the other answers, but with some explanation. The accepted answer is misleading because its property is optional and doesn't expose the fact that your init?(coder: NSCoder) MUST initialize each and every property and the only solution to that is having a fatalError(). Ultimately you could get away by making your properties optionals, but that doesn't truly answer the OP’s question.

// Think more of a OnlyNibOrProgrammatic_NOTStoryboardViewController
class ViewController: UIViewController {

    let name: String

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
    }

    // I don't have a nib. It's all through my code.
    init(name: String) {
        self.name = name

        super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
    }

    // I have a nib. I'd like to use my nib and also initialze the `name` property
    init(name: String, nibName nibNameOrNil: String?, bundle nibBundleOrNil: Bundle? ) {
        self.name = name
        super.init(nibName: nibNameOrNil, bundle: nibBundleOrNil)
    }

    // when you do storyboard.instantiateViewController(withIdentifier: "ViewController")
    // The SYSTEM will never call this!
    // it wants to call the required initializer!

    init?(name: String, coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        self.name = "name"
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
    }

    // when you do storyboard.instantiateViewController(withIdentifier: "ViewController")
    // The SYSTEM WILL call this!
    // because this is its required initializer!
    // but what are you going to do for your `name` property?!
    // are you just going to do `self.name = "default Name" just to make it compile?!
    // Since you can't do anything then it's just best to leave it as `fatalError()`
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("I WILL NEVER instantiate through storyboard! It's impossible to initialize super.init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) with any other parameter")
    }
}

You basically have to ABANDON loading it from storyboard. Why?

Because when you call a viewController storyboard.instantiateViewController(withIdentifier: "viewController") then UIKit will do its thing and call

required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
}

You can never redirect that call to another init method.

_{Docs on instantiateViewController(withIdentifier:):}

Use this method to create a view controller object to present programmatically. Each time you call this method, it creates a new instance of the view controller using the init(coder:) method.

Yet for programmatically created viewController or nib created viewControllers you can redirect that call as shown above.

Convenience initializers are secondary, supporting initializers for a class. You can define a convenience initializer to call a designated initializer from the same class as the convenience initializer with some of the designated initializer’s parameters set to default values. You can also define a convenience initializer to create an instance of that class for a specific use case or input value type.

They are documented here.