What is the height of the new iOS 10 Today Widget/Extension?

Question

I am building an iOS Today widget, and while testing for iOS 10 I noticed that all widgets are now being given the same height (previous versions allowed the dev to set the

Answer 1

The widget in iOS 10 has been changed as you have noticed and does now have a fixed height. There has also been added new features to the today extension. On of them is the NCWidgetDisplayMode. Basically you have a button up in the right corner where you can "Show more" or "Show less".

Begin by adding the following to your viewDidLoad()

self.preferredContentSize = CGSize(width: 0, height: 200)

if #available(iOSApplicationExtension 10.0, *) {
    self.extensionContext?.widgetLargestAvailableDisplayMode = .expanded
} else {
    // Fallback on earlier versions
}

What you then need to do is to basically add the following method:

Swift version:

@available(iOSApplicationExtension 10.0, *)
func widgetActiveDisplayModeDidChange(activeDisplayMode: NCWidgetDisplayMode, withMaximumSize maxSize: CGSize) {
    if activeDisplayMode == NCWidgetDisplayMode.Compact {
        self.preferredContentSize = CGSizeMake(0.0, 200.0)
    }
    else if activeDisplayMode == NCWidgetDisplayMode.Expanded {
        self.preferredContentSize = desiredSize
    }

}

Objective-C version:

- (void)widgetActiveDisplayModeDidChange:(NCWidgetDisplayMode)activeDisplayMode withMaximumSize:(CGSize)maxSize{
    if (activeDisplayMode == NCWidgetDisplayModeCompact){
        self.preferredContentSize = CGSizeMake(0.0, 200.0);
    }
    else if (activeDisplayMode == NCWidgetDisplayModeExpanded){
        self.preferredContentSize = desiredSize;
    }
}

Note two things here:

Xcode will automatically suggest that you add the available check for the iOS version (for Swift at least). So do not remove the old way to do this self.preferredContentSize = CGSizeMake... This is still needed for older iOS versions.

In the widgetActiveDisplayModeDidChangefunction activeDisplayMode == NCWidgetDisplayMode.Compactwill be called when you go from "Show more" > "Show less". This is because it´s trigged immediately from the iOS system. And activeDisplayMode == NCWidgetDisplayMode.Expanded will be called when you go from "Show less" > "Show more".

And one last thing, this is kind of buggy still with the "Show more" and "Show less" buttons and it´s not fixed yet by Apple. Check the demonstration from Apples Keynote and you will notice that he had the bug issue with this.