I've tried adding 'search suggestions' to my app using iOS 16's new 'searchSuggestions' property but I'm finding it quite limited/frustrating to work with. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems even though you can set searchSuggestions on a UISearchBar that is not part of a UISearchController, and these suggestions will show just fine, there's no way to get any information about which suggestion has been selected.
To do that you need to use a search controller, which I'd rather not use. However to proceed further I added a search controller to my app. There now seems to be further limitations:
With a search controller added to a navigation item (seemingly the only way to get the search suggestions to show with a search controller), iOS will display the suggestions in different ways depending on the navigation item's 'searchBarPlacement' value - inline will display 'floating' suggestions, while stacked will show a 'list'.
The problem is I much prefer the floating style (looks much better/modern), but this affects the search bar style - the search bar is replaced with a search icon that expands to a search bar when pressed. If I want a normal search bar without a search icon, then I'm forced to use the list style, which also appears to completely hide everything underneath it.
Any way around these issues? To recap there's three things:
- Selection status can't be determined when showing search suggestions without a search controller
- 'Floating' search suggestions can't be shown with a stacked search bar placement
- 'List' search suggestions hide everything underneath