How to place UIScrollView content always below SafeArea, even if content height smaller than ScrollView height?

Question

TL;DR According to the Apple docs, the UIScrollView.ContentInsetAdjustmentBehavior only affects the content inset, (...) when the vertical content size is greater than the height of the scroll view itself.

Thus when the content size is smaller than the scroll view height, the content inset is not adapted to the safe area.

Can this be avoided to place the content always below the safe area?

Details:

A UIViewController only contains a UIScrollView as direct subview, which is placed with 0 constraints to all for screen edges (superview, NOT safe area). Thus the UIScrollView extends below the upper safe area.

The UIScrollView contains three UILabels. Depending on the language the number of lines and thus the height of the labels may vary. The first label is placed with 0 top constraint to the Content Layout Guide of the ScrollView. The second label has 0 top and bottom constrains the first and third label. The third label has a 0 bottom constraint to the Content Layout Guide. Nothing special.

Depending on the text/language and/or the device, the labels may exceed the height of the ScrollView or not. If the combined label height / content height is larger that the height of the ScrollView everything works as intended and the first label is automatically placed below the top safe area.

However, when the label / content height is smaller than the ScrollView hight (no scrolling necessary), the first label is placed at the top screen edge and thus its content is covered by the content of the status bar.

I do not understand why the automatic content inset adaption is only applied if the content size is larger than the scrollView hight. What is the reason behind this behavior?

Most important: How can this be avoided and to place the content always below the safe area?

Answer 1

A scroll view's .ContentInsetAdjustmentBehavior can be:

• automatic
• always
• scrollableAxes
• never

If you want to "place the content always below the safe area", use .always

As to why there are options with different behaviors? Well, my guess it to provide options for designs that would take advantage of them.