I’m working on an iOS app where I have a text label that’s positioned using autolayout constraints. The label should stay in a fixed position on the screen.
The problem happens when I toggle the navigation bar visibility. I set up a tap gesture so users can hide or show the navigation bar by tapping anywhere on the screen. When this happens, the label jumps or shifts position for a brief moment before settling back to where it should be.
I want the label to remain completely stationary regardless of whether the navigation bar is visible or hidden. The animation for hiding the navigation bar is something I want to keep, but it seems like this animation is somehow interfering with the autolayout system.
My label has constraints that should keep it in the same spot relative to the view bounds. Has anyone experienced this kind of layout glitch before? What’s the best way to prevent autolayout from getting confused during navigation bar animations?
This happens because of constraint priority conflicts when the nav bar transitions. The system messes with constraint priorities during animation, causing that jump you’re seeing. Set explicit priority values on your label’s constraints - I use 999 instead of the default 1000. This stops the system from overriding them during nav bar animation. Another fix that worked for me: use setNavigationBarHidden(_:animated:) inside a custom animation block so you can control the timing better. The flicker happens because autolayout recalculates mid-animation, so controlling when those calculations happen fixes it.
Had this exact problem six months ago - drove me nuts for days. When the nav bar animates in/out, it interferes with the safe area layout guides, causing a chain reaction in constraints even if your label isn’t directly linked to the nav bar. What worked for me was wrapping the nav bar visibility change in a UIView animation block using .allowUserInteraction and .beginFromCurrentState. Also, add self.view.layoutIfNeeded() at the end of the animation block to ensure everything recalculates properly. The key is managing the layout to prevent the conflict between autolayout animations and system animations, eliminating the jumping behavior.
constrain ur label to the superview edges, not the safe area - that fixed it for me. the nav bar changes mess with safe area calculations during animation, causing the jump. also make sure you’ve disabled translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints.
Set your nav controller’s hidesBarsOnTap property instead of manually toggling. It handles animation timing better and won’t mess with constraint calculations. Had the same issues until I switched to this.
Your navigation controller is auto-adjusting content insets when the bar visibility changes. Even with correct label constraints, the scroll view or main view gets its insets modified during transition, messing with your constraint system. I hit this same issue building a photo viewer app. Fixed it by overriding viewDidLayoutSubviews to manually reset unwanted constraint changes. You can also set automaticallyAdjustsScrollViewInsets to false if you’re using a scroll view, or tweak edgesForExtendedLayout to control how content responds to nav bar changes. That brief jump happens because the system applies inset changes before constraints finish recalculating.