How to fade a UIVisualEffectView and/or UIBlurEffect in and out?

Question

I want to fade a UIVisualEffectsView with a UIBlurEffect in and out:

var blurEffectView = UIVisualEffectView()
blurEffectView = UIVisualEffectView(effect: UI         


        

Answer 1

I ended up with the following solution, using separate animations for the UIVisualEffectView and the contents. I used the viewWithTag() method to get a reference to the UIView inside the UIVisualEffectView.

let blurEffectView = UIVisualEffectView()
// Fade in
UIView.animateWithDuration(1) { self.blurEffectView.effect = UIBlurEffect(style: .Light) }    
UIView.animateWithDuration(1) { self.blurEffectView.viewWithTag(1)?.alpha = 1 }
// Fade out
UIView.animateWithDuration(1) { self.blurEffectView.effect = nil }    
UIView.animateWithDuration(1) { self.blurEffectView.viewWithTag(1)?.alpha = 0 }

I would prefer the single animation changing the alpha, but this avoids the error and seems to work just as well.