Swift - create a back button without navigation controller

Question

I have an app that has a toolbar, but I don't want the bar at the top, in order to free more viewing space. Therefore I have decided not to use a navigation controller. I'd like to add a back button to the toolbar. How would I go about this?

Adding the button is easy enough, and setting the action to performSegueWithIdentifier is all fine, but what happens is that the previous view just gets loaded again, rather than show it as it was, like a true back button. So if I tap on the 10th row on a tableView and go to a new page, when I press the back button it loads the view from the top again, instead of showing it as where I scrolled down to last.

Answer 1

Even though you don't want a UINavigationBar, you do want a UINavigationController in this case, because it manages the 'back stack' exactly the way you want it. Just hide its navigation bar by setting its navigationBarHidden property to true (in the Storyboard or in the viewDidLoad function of the root view controller).

You can then use navigationController.popViewController(true) as normal, in response to the user clicking your custom back button.