iPhone X how to handle View Controller inputAccessoryView?

Question

I have a messaging app that has the typical UI design of a text field at the bottom of a full screen table view. I am setting that text field to be the view controller\'s

Answer 1

After much research and trials, this seems to be a working solution for trying to use UIToolbar with a text input's inputAccessoryView. (Most of the existing solutions are for using fixed accessory view instead of assigning it to a text view (and hiding it when the keyboard is closed).)

The code is inspired by https://stackoverflow.com/a/46510833/2603230. Basically, we first create a custom view that has a toolbar subview:

class CustomInputAccessoryWithToolbarView: UIView {
    public var toolbar: UIToolbar!

    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame: frame)

        // https://stackoverflow.com/a/58524360/2603230
        toolbar = UIToolbar(frame: frame)

        // Below is adopted from https://stackoverflow.com/a/46510833/2603230
        self.addSubview(toolbar)

        self.autoresizingMask = .flexibleHeight

        toolbar.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        toolbar.leadingAnchor.constraint(
            equalTo: self.leadingAnchor,
            constant: 0
        ).isActive = true
        toolbar.trailingAnchor.constraint(
            equalTo: self.trailingAnchor,
            constant: 0
        ).isActive = true
        toolbar.topAnchor.constraint(
            equalTo: self.topAnchor,
            constant: 0
        ).isActive = true
        // This is the important part:
        if #available(iOS 11.0, *) {
            toolbar.bottomAnchor.constraint(
                equalTo: self.safeAreaLayoutGuide.bottomAnchor,
                constant: 0
            ).isActive = true
        } else {
            toolbar.bottomAnchor.constraint(
                equalTo: self.layoutMarginsGuide.bottomAnchor,
                constant: 0
            ).isActive = true
        }
    }

    required init?(coder: NSCoder) {
        fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
    }

    // https://stackoverflow.com/a/46510833/2603230
    // This is needed so that the inputAccesoryView is properly sized from the auto layout constraints.
    // Actual value is not important.
    override var intrinsicContentSize: CGSize {
        return CGSize.zero
    }
}

Then you can set it as an inputAccessoryView for a text input normally: (You should specify the frame size to avoid the warnings seen in UIToolbar with UIBarButtonItem LayoutConstraint issue)

let myAccessoryView = CustomInputAccessoryWithToolbarView(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: self.view.frame.size.width, height: 44))
textView.inputAccessoryView = myAccessoryView

When you want to interact with the toolbar (e.g., set items on the toolbar), you can simply refer to the toolbar variable:

myAccessoryView.toolbar.setItems(myToolbarItems, animated: true)

---

Demo: (with hardware keyboard / Command+K in simulator)

Before:

After: