tvOS UITabBarController start unfocused

Question

I have a simple tvOS application starting with a UITabBarController and I wish the main view to have the focus when the app launches, not the tab bar.

I've tried playing with self.tabBarController.tabBar.userInteractionEnabled to remove temporarily the focus, but in vain. (Besides I do no like that kind of workaround)

Any clue?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The above approach mostly works but does not allow you to select a tab bar item with click as it returns the tabBar in that case when it should return the selectedItem. Here is an improved version which solves this by returning [super preferredViewController] instead of tabBar in the normal case. This version also hides the tab bar with alpha at launch so that it doesn't flicker in. There are probably more elegant ways to do the hiding.

@interface MWTabBarController ()

@property (nonatomic, assign) BOOL firstTime;

@end

@implementation MWTabBarController

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    self.firstTime = YES;
    self.tabBar.alpha = 0;
    [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:1.0 target:self selector:@selector(unAlphaTabBar) userInfo:nil repeats:NO];
}

- (void) unAlphaTabBar
{
    self.tabBar.alpha = 1;
}

- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning {
    [super didReceiveMemoryWarning];
}

- (UIView *)preferredFocusedView {
    if (self.firstTime) {
        self.firstTime = NO;
        return self.selectedViewController.preferredFocusedView;
    }
    else {
        return [super preferredFocusedView];
    }
}