iPad keyboard will not dismiss if modal ViewController presentation style is UIModalPresentationFormSheet

Question

This has been classified as "works as intended" by Apple engineers. I filed a bug for this a while back. Their reasoning is that the user is often going to be entering data in a modal form so they are trying to be "helpful" and keep the keyboard visible where ordinarily various transitions within the modal view can cause the keyboard to show/hide repeatedly.

edit: here is the response of an Apple engineer on the developer forums:

Was your view by any chance presented with the UIModalPresentationFormSheet style? To avoid frequent in-and-out animations, the keyboard will sometimes remain on-screen even when there is no first responder. This is not a bug.

This is giving a lot of people problems (myself included) but at the moment there doesn't seem to be a way to work around it.

UPDATE:

In iOS 4.3 and later, you can now implement `-disablesAutomaticKeyboardDismissal' on your view controller to return NO:

- (BOOL)disablesAutomaticKeyboardDismissal {
    return NO;
}

This fixes the issue.

Be careful if you are displaying the modal with a UINavigationController. You then have to set the disablesAutomaticKeyboardDismissal on the navigation controller and not on the view controller. You can easily do this with categories.

File: UINavigationController+KeyboardDismiss.h

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface UINavigationController (KeyboardDismiss)

- (BOOL)disablesAutomaticKeyboardDismissal;

@end

File: UINavigationController+KeyboardDismiss.m

#import "UINavigationController+KeyboardDismiss.h"

@implementation UINavigationController(KeyboardDismiss)

- (BOOL)disablesAutomaticKeyboardDismissal
{
    return NO;
}

@end

Do not forget to import the category in the file where you use the UINavigationController.

In the view controller that is presented modally, just override disablesAutomaticKeyboardDismissal to return NO:

- (BOOL)disablesAutomaticKeyboardDismissal {
    return NO;
}

I solved this by using the UIModalPresentationPageSheet presentation style and resizing it immediately after I present it. Like so:

viewController.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationPageSheet;
viewController.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStyleFlipHorizontal;
[self presentModalViewController:viewController animated:YES];
viewController.view.superview.autoresizingMask = 
    UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleTopMargin | 
    UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleBottomMargin;    
viewController.view.superview.frame = CGRectMake(
    viewController.view.superview.frame.origin.x,
    viewController.view.superview.frame.origin.y,
    540.0f,
    529.0f
);
viewController.view.superview.center = self.view.center;
[viewController release];

If you toggle a different modal display you can get the keyboard to disappear. It's not pretty and it doesn't animate down, but you can get it to go away.

It'd be great if there was a fix, but for now this works. You can wedge it in a category on UIViewController and call it when you want the keyboard gone:

@interface _TempUIVC : UIViewController
@end

@implementation _TempUIVC
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {
    return YES;
}
@end

@implementation UIViewController (Helpers)

- (void)_dismissModalViewController {
    [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:NO];
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:UIKeyboardDidHideNotification object:nil];
    [self release];
}

- (void)forceKeyboardDismissUsingModalToggle:(BOOL)animated {
    [self retain];
    _TempUIVC *tuivc = [[_TempUIVC alloc] init];
    tuivc.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationCurrentContext;
    [self presentModalViewController:tuivc animated:animated];
    if (animated) {
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(_dismissModalViewController) name:UIKeyboardDidHideNotification object:nil];
    } else
        [self _dismissModalViewController];
    [tuivc release];
}

@end

Be careful with this though as you viewDidAppear / viewDidDisappear and all those methods get called. Like I said, it's not pretty, but does work.

-Adam