During WWDC Q&As I asked how I could add an inspector to my UIKit app that’s using UISplitViewController with a double column style featuring a sidebar and detail view controller. I initially tried a full-height inspector (by putting my split view controller into a SwiftUI view and applying the inspector on that, embedding that into a UIHostingController to be the rootViewController) but this caused a bunch of UI bugs (seemingly related to optimizations made for a size class that doesn’t match the actual appearance) and it doesn’t extend into the NSToolbar on Mac Catalyst anyways. I now want to try implementing the under-the-toolbar solution. An engineer said:
For an under toolbar appearance, you should be able to use .inspector on the detail view controller (after wrapping it in a SwiftUI view), but you may have to do manual toolbar management here (hiding and showing) to make sure you don't end up with stacked toolbars/UINavigationBars
I have indeed run into the problem with two navigation bars in my inspector. I want to keep the navigation bar visible in the detail screen, but I do not want any navigation bars visible in my inspector since I’m going to provide my own button to toggle the inspector (via a button in the detail on iOS and an NSToolbarItem on macOS). Is this layout possible? I tried applying .toolbar(.hidden) on the inspector’s view but this doesn’t do anything, there’s still two stacked navigation bars (tested on iPadOS 17 beta 2). I think even if that worked it would only hide the inner navigation bar, I’d still have an undesirable navigation bar. :/ Wishing there were a UIKit API I could avoid the interop complexity ha
In the sample project attached to FB12447791, the root view controller is a UISplitViewController. The primary view controller is a UINavigationController containing a sidebar. The secondary view controller is a UINavigationController containing a UIHostingController whose root view is a SecondaryColumnView. SecondaryColumnView is a Form that has a button to Toggle Inspector, a navigation title, and an inspector. The inspector is a Form that has .toolbar(.hidden).
I've provided several screen recordings in the feedback report as well. Thanks for your help and insight!
