How to push two view controllers but animate transition only for the second one?

Question

I have three controllers (FirstVC, SecondVC, ThirdVC) inside storyboad, and navigation is sequential: a user can navigate from FirstVC to SecondVC, and then to ThirdVC. Now,

Answer 1

To preserve the standard animation for pushing a view controller, in Swift:

let pushVC = UIViewController()
let backVC = UIViewController()

if let navigationController = navigationController {

  navigationController.pushViewController(pushVC, animated: true)

  let stackCount = navigationController.viewControllers.count
  let addIndex = stackCount - 1
  navigationController.viewControllers.insert(backVC, atIndex: addIndex)

}

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This displays pushVC normally and inserts backVC into the navigation stack, preserving both the animation and the history for the UINavigationController.

You can use setViewControllers, but you'll lose the standard push animation.