Grouped UITableview remove outer separator line

Question

I have a grouped UITableview which is created programatically. Also I have a cell with xib file populated in tableview programmatically as well. So far so good. But I want t

Answer 1

That is a really old question, still it's one of the first entries on google when searching for how to remove the top and bottom separators for each section.

After some investigation, I found out that there is no way and just no intention from Apple to make this somehow happen without stupidly complicated hacks of the view hierarchy.

Fortunately there is a absolutely simple and easy way of achieving such a look:

I say simple but for a beginner, this might be difficult because of a lack of understanding how UITableView works and how to implement your own cells. Let me try to explain it:

1. Create a UITableViewCell subclass
2. In your cell, create a @IBOutlet weak var separatorView: UIView! property
3. In your Storyboard, select the tableview cell and select your own cell as the class which backs up the cell. Note: You do not have to use custom style. You still can use Basic, Subtitle, etc.
4. Set your UITableViews Separator Style to None to hide the default separator
5. Drag a UIView onto your cell and resize it so it is on the bottom (or the top) of the cell. Use the Size Inspectors Autoresizing to pin it to start/end/bottom and give it a flex width (or Autolayout but thats just over the top in this case)
6. Connect the view to the outlet of your cell class
7. In your UITableViewDataSources cellForRowAtIndexPath: set the isHidden property of your custom separator based on if the indexPath.row is the last row (or the first, if your view is at the top) in the section

Heres some example code:

class MyCell: UITableViewCell {
    @IBOutlet weak var separatorView: UIView!
}

class ViewController: UITableViewController {


    override func numberOfSections(in tableView: UITableView) -> Int {
        return 3
    }
    override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, numberOfRowsInSection section: Int) -> Int {
        return 3
    }

    override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
        let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "Cell", for: indexPath) as! MyCell
        cell.separatorView.isHidden = indexPath.row == 2
        return cell
    }

}

And here some screenshots:

Yes, it is some work but there is just no way to something for free when coding. In the end, we are programmers and it is up to us to do the coding. It's always better to spend the 5-10 minutes setting this up than just copy pasting some hacky code which might not continue to work in the future when Apple decides to change the view hierarchy.

It was actually more work to write this answer than implementing the separator. I as well was searching for a easy and quick solution but in the end there just wasn't a good enough one which I felt was worth using.

I hope you also feel skeptical when you see for-loops iterating over subviews of cells to hide or even remove views at runtime from the view hierarchy Apple provides you, when there is an easy, versatile, stable and future proof solution right around the corner. 7 little steps is really all you need and they are easy to understand.