How do you dismiss a UISearchController ? (iOS 8 and follow)

This must be trivial, but I can't find how you're supposed to dismiss a UISearchController programmatically?

Note that it's the new UISearchController (introduced in 2014 with iOS 8), not the UISearchDisplayController.

So far here's what I've got

// Dismiss the search tableview
searchController.dismissViewControllerAnimated()
// Clear the Search bar text
searchController.active = false

But I still have the cancel button and can't get rid of it.


OK so after more testing, turns out you just have to set:

searchController.active = false
// or swift 4+
searchController.isActive = false

This is the first thing I tried but I called it in one of the UISearchControllerDelegate methods which didn't work (probably should have called it with dispatch_async (halbano's answer seems to confirm that)).

Anyway, since I couldn't find that answer online, I'm answering my own question, I hope that it'll help someone.


Did you have this problem when you try to dismiss search controller after segueing to another view? I have encountered this problem too. I think you might want to use

self.definesPresentationContext = true 

in the view controller that presents the UISearchController as per this post UISearchController not dismissed when View is pushed. It works for me.


I was presenting the mine embed on a navigation bar. The code that works for me was:

- (void)searchBarCancelButtonClicked:(UISearchBar *)searchBar{
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
        [self.searchController setActive:NO];
        self.navigationController.navigationBar.topItem.title = @"MYTITLE".uppercaseString;
        self.navigationItem.titleView = nil;
    });
}

Hope it helps someone.