How to display a “spinning wheel” indicator in the centre of your screen

Screen Shot 2013-12-31 at 15.58.02Sometimes you want to tell the user that something’s happening behind the scenes and that there’s no need to panic. While your process is happening you can display a “spinning gear” in the middle of your screen.

One way of doing this is via a UIActivityIndicatorView.

You can create them in Interface Builder, but it’s very easy to create one and show it if and when necessary. Here’s how:

- (UIActivityIndicatorView *)indicator {
    if (!_indicator) {
        _indicator = [[UIActivityIndicatorView alloc]initWithActivityIndicatorStyle:UIActivityIndicatorViewStyleWhiteLarge];
    }
    return _indicator;
}

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];

    self.indicator.center = self.view.center;
    [self.view addSubview:self.indicator];
}

This creates it in the centre of your UI, but it’s invisible until switched on like so:

// to start spinning
[self.indicator startAnimating];

// and to stop it again
[self.indicator stopAnimating];

The UIActivityIndicatorView has a property that automatically hides it when stopped, so all we have to worry about is starting and stopping it when necessary.

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