Transparent UITableViewCell flashing background when animating

Question

I have a UIViewController with a custom background color. On top of it there's a UITableView with UITableViewCells that are semi-transparent (white color with opacity 0.5).

The issue I'm blaming about and the one I'm banging my head against the wall is in iOS 7, when you have a UITableViewCell with semi-transparent background and you try to delete/insert/moving rows (so relying on an animation effect) the entire UITableView with its cells flashing for just 0.1 second and set cells background to a more transparent one. This is very annoying.

The only thing I'm doing is set the background color of self.view with:

self.view.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithRed:0.4 green:0.5 blue:0.7 alpha:1];

and set the background color of cells with:

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView willDisplayCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    cell.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:1 alpha:0.5];
}

Here's a gif showing you the problem:

And here's the super simple project: https://github.com/socksz/TransparentCellFlashing

Please help me to solve this ridicolous issue! :P

Answer 1

1. Create a subclass of UITableViewCell(Such as named: CustomCell), and override the method in CustomCell.m :

   - (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)aDecoder{
       self = [super initWithCoder:aDecoder];
       if(self){
           // Initialization code
           [self setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
           UIView * bgView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:self.frame];
           [bgView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor colorWithWhite:1 alpha:0.5]];
           [self addSubview:bgView];
       }
       return self;
   }
   

2. Remove willDisplayCell method in MasterViewController.m

   - (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView willDisplayCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
   {
       cell.backgroundColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite:1 alpha:0.5];
   }
   

3. Change the cellForRowAtIndexPath method in MasterViewController.m

   - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
   {
       CustomCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"Cell" forIndexPath:indexPath];
       [self configureCell:cell atIndexPath:indexPath];
       return cell;
   }
   

4. Change the cell's class type in storyboard

Just have a try :D