keep the look of my ios app like it is in ios6 rather than ios7

Question

I have an ios app which was developed during ios5 to ios6

after updating my iPhone to ios7, there's something wrong with it.

For example, I had a textfield in an alertView which was supposed to input some password of the users, but in ios7 the interactors change a lot and the textfield is gone.

Also lots of other UI elements change greatly including switches, buttons, etc.

The UI of my app is not really flat style and it does not fit ios7 looks. I'm gonna update my app to fix the problem of alertView, but is there anyway that I can keep the interactors(buttons, switches, alertView, etc.) as the same as ios6?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

If you build your app with pre-Xcode 5, then it will retain the look and feel of iOS 6, even on iOS 7. But if you build your app with Xcode 5, then it will have the new iOS 7 look and feel when run on iOS 7.

However, you specifically mention UIAlertView, which is an exception. Even for existing apps that haven't been rebuilt with Xcode 5, the UIAlertView will always appear with the iOS 7 look when run on iOS 7. There's nothing you can do to have the old UIAlertView when on iOS 7.

From the sound of your question, it sounds like you're manually adding your own text field to a UIAlertView. You should never manually add views to a UIAlertView. Apple does not support this, and it appears that it is broken with iOS 7 anyway. If you look at the documentation for UIAlertView, you'll see that you can make it display a text field, including one for password input, that should fit your needs. So I would suggest updating your app to properly use the built-in text field functionality of UIAlertView.

As for keeping your app with the old look and feel, starting February 1st, Apple will stop accepting apps into the app store that are built with an Xcode version earlier than Xcode 5. So all new app submissions at that point will have the new iOS 7 look and feel when run on iOS 7. So whether you like it or not, you're going to have to deal with revising your UI to fit in with the look and feel of iOS 7.

Answer 2

You can do it through setting the Base SDK of your project target as iOS 6.1.

To do this , first go to Xcode 4 (Xcode.app), right click->Show Package Contents -> Contents->Developer->Platforms->iPhoneOS.platform->Developer->SDKs and copy the iPhoneOS6.1.sdk

Then go to Xcode5(Xcode.app),right click->Show Package Contents -> Contents->Developer->Platforms->iPhoneOS.platform->Developer->SDKs and paste the copied iPhoneOS6.1.sdk

So its looks like as below,

Then Quit Xcode5 and re-open Xcode5 ->Project Target->Build Settings->Base SDK and set it as iOS6.1

You can select the desired simulators from Xcode.

If its not availble, go to Xcode->Preferences->Downloads and download the simulators