Prevent automatic popToRootViewController on double-tap of UITabBarController

Question

The default behavior of a UITabBarController is to pop the contained UINavigationController to the root view controller when a particular tab is tapped a second time. I have a particular use case where I'm wanting this to not work automatically, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to prevent this.

Has anyone run into this, and if so, what did you do? Do I need to subclass UINavigationController and override popToRootViewController or is there a simpler way?

Answer 1

Use the tabBarController:shouldSelectViewController: method of the UITabBarControllerDelegate protocol.

- (BOOL)tabBarController:(UITabBarController *)tabBarController shouldSelectViewController:(UIViewController *)viewController {
    return viewController != tabBarController.selectedViewController;
}

Don't forget to set the delegate of the tab bar controller to the object that actually implements this delegate method.