Remove UIWebView Shadow?

Question

This is a cleaner alternative to "Nikolai Krill" solution. This only hides UIImageViews within the UIWebView and not the UIWebBrowserView.

for (UIView *view in [[[webView subviews] objectAtIndex:0] subviews]) { 
  if ([view isKindOfClass:[UIImageView class]]) view.hidden = YES;
}   

Thanks James

the small for loop is very dangerous because it can crash if apple changes the number of the subviews.

this way it does at least not crash when something changes:

if ([[webView subviews] count] > 0)
{
    for (UIView* shadowView in [[[webView subviews] objectAtIndex:0] subviews])
    {
        [shadowView setHidden:YES];
    }

    // unhide the last view so it is visible again because it has the content
    [[[[[webView subviews] objectAtIndex:0] subviews] lastObject] setHidden:NO];
}

There is a private method with the selector setAllowsRubberBanding: that takes a BOOL value. If passed NO, you will not be able to scroll the web view past the top or bottom of the content area, but will still let you scroll through the web view normally. Unfortunately, this method IS private, and your app will likely not be allowed onto the store if you use it.

You could, however, potentially try and extract the method implementation and bind it to a different selector that you've created, using the dynamic nature of Objective-C's runtime.

Still, the method is private and may no longer exist in future versions of the OS. If you still want to try, here's some sample code that will extract the setAllowsRubberBanding: method implementation and call it for you.

static inline void ShhhDoNotTellAppleAboutThis (UIWebView *webview)
{
    const char *hax3d = "frgNyybjfEhooreOnaqvat";
    char appleSelName[24];

    for (int i = 0; i < 22; ++i)
    {
        char c = hax3d[i];
        appleSelName[i] = (c >= 'a' && c <= 'z') ? ((c - 'a' + 13) % 26) + 'a' : ((c - 'A' + 13) % 26) + 'A';
    }
    appleSelName[22] = ':';
    appleSelName[23] = 0;

    SEL appleSEL = sel_getUid(appleSelName);

    UIScrollView *scrollView = (UIScrollView *)[webview.subviews objectAtIndex:0];
    Class cls = [scrollView class];
    if (class_respondsToSelector(cls, appleSEL) == NO)
    {
        return;
    }

    IMP func = class_getMethodImplementation(cls, appleSEL);
    func(scrollView, appleSEL, NO);
}

Please note that this will probably still get caught by Apple's static analyzer if you choose to submit an app using this code to the AppStore.

Here is a Swift function that gets rid of the shadow in a UIWebView in iOS 9. It’s safer than any alternative I’ve seen on SO because everything in it is in Apple documentation, and it specifically alters the shadow property (as opposed to hiding the entire view or some other property of the view).

func removeShadow(webView: UIWebView) {
    for subview:UIView in webView.scrollView.subviews {
        subview.layer.shadowOpacity = 0
        for subsubview in subview.subviews {
            subsubview.layer.shadowOpacity = 0
        }
    }
}

You can always access the subviews property of a UIView(documentation). Every UIView has a layer property that is a CALayer (documentation). Every CALayer has shadowOpacity (documentation).

Caveats:

1. You might have to go deeper in navigating the view hierarchy through subviews depending on your situation.
2. This works as long as you don’t want any shadows anywhere in the web view controller. If you have a view where you want to keep the shadow (other than the default UIWebView shadow), then you could add an if-check to identify that view and not set that view’s layer’s shadowOpacity to zero.
3. According to Apple “For complex views declared in UIKit and other system frameworks, any subviews of the view are generally considered private and subject to change at any time. Therefore, you should not attempt to retrieve or modify subviews for these types of system-supplied views. If you do, your code may break during a future system update” . . . in other words, UIWebView can change and its not recommended to be digging into these subviews. However, digging into the UIWebView is the only way to get rid of the shadow and this is a relatively safe way to do it.