How to hide the home indicator on iPhone X

Paul Hudson    September 20th 2017    @twostraws

iPhone X did away with the home button for the first time in any iPhone, replacing it with an interactive line that sits at the bottom of the screen called the home indicator.

This indicator always remains visible unless you request others, and generally Apple suggests it’s a good idea to keep it visible. At the same time, there are many times when you want full control of the screen to yourself, for example if the user is watching a video, and in those times you’re going to want to hide the home indicator.

To hide the home indicator on iPhone X all you need to do is return true from the prefersHomeIndicatorAutoHidden() method in your view controller. You can add logic if you want, allowing you to hide the home indicator only when certain conditions are reached, or you can just always request it be hidden, like this:

override func prefersHomeIndicatorAutoHidden() -> Bool {
    return true
}

That will cause the home indicator to be hidden after a couple of seconds, but it will reappear as soon as the user touches the screen.

Available from iOS 11.0 – see Hacking with Swift tutorial 1

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