Dynamically setting layout on UICollectionView causes inexplicable contentOffset change

Question

According to Apple\'s documentation (and touted at WWDC 2012), it is possible to set the layout on UICollectionView dynamically and even animate the changes:

Answer 1

This issue bit me as well and it seems to be a bug in the transition code. From what I can tell it tries to focus on the cell that was closest to the center of the pre-transition view layout. However, if there doesn't happen to be a cell at the center of the view pre-transition then it still tries to center where the cell would be post-transition. This is very clear if you set alwaysBounceVertical/Horizontal to YES, load the view with a single cell and then perform a layout transition.

I was able to get around this by explicitly telling the collection to focus on a specific cell (the first cell visible cell, in this example) after triggering the layout update.

[self.collectionView setCollectionViewLayout:[self generateNextLayout] animated:YES];

// scroll to the first visible cell
if ( 0 < self.collectionView.indexPathsForVisibleItems.count ) {
    NSIndexPath *firstVisibleIdx = [[self.collectionView indexPathsForVisibleItems] objectAtIndex:0];
    [self.collectionView scrollToItemAtIndexPath:firstVisibleIdx atScrollPosition:UICollectionViewScrollPositionCenteredVertically animated:YES];
}