Determine if UIView is visible to the user?

Question

is it possible to determine whether my UIView is visible to the user or not?

My View is added as subview several times into a Tab Bar

Answer 1

I benchmarked both @Audrey M. and @John Gibb their solutions.
And @Audrey M. his way performed better (times 10).
So I used that one to make it observable.

I made a RxSwift Observable, to get notified when the UIView became visible.
This could be useful if you want to trigger a banner 'view' event

import Foundation
import UIKit
import RxSwift

extension UIView {
    var isVisibleToUser: Bool {

        if isHidden || alpha == 0 || superview == nil {
            return false
        }

        guard let rootViewController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.rootViewController else {
            return false
        }

        let viewFrame = convert(bounds, to: rootViewController.view)

        let topSafeArea: CGFloat
        let bottomSafeArea: CGFloat

        if #available(iOS 11.0, *) {
            topSafeArea = rootViewController.view.safeAreaInsets.top
            bottomSafeArea = rootViewController.view.safeAreaInsets.bottom
        } else {
            topSafeArea = rootViewController.topLayoutGuide.length
            bottomSafeArea = rootViewController.bottomLayoutGuide.length
        }

        return viewFrame.minX >= 0 &&
            viewFrame.maxX <= rootViewController.view.bounds.width &&
            viewFrame.minY >= topSafeArea &&
            viewFrame.maxY <= rootViewController.view.bounds.height - bottomSafeArea

    }
}

extension Reactive where Base: UIView {
    var isVisibleToUser: Observable {
        // Every second this will check `isVisibleToUser`
        return Observable.interval(.milliseconds(1000),
                                        scheduler: MainScheduler.instance)
        .flatMap { [base] _ in
            return Observable.just(base.isVisibleToUser)
        }.distinctUntilChanged()
    }
}

Use it as like this:

import RxSwift
import UIKit
import Foundation

private let disposeBag = DisposeBag()

private func _checkBannerVisibility() {

    bannerView.rx.isVisibleToUser
        .filter { $0 }
        .take(1) // Only trigger it once
        .subscribe(onNext: { [weak self] _ in
            // ... Do something
        }).disposed(by: disposeBag)
}