Question

So i would like to use the UIMenuController to display text. i would like to add in help buttons (press a little button and something will pop up describing what something does) that would display either a UIMenuController or something that looks similar to it. it would just display a few lines of text and dismiss when pressed.

it kinda looks like UIMenuController is only meant for button selection. i could just use one button and set the title to the message i wish to display, but am doubtful on how well that would work. are there any other options available?

Answer 1

A UIMenuController takes it content from its menuItems property and the documentation says :

The default value is nil (no custom menu items). Each menu item is an
instance of the UIMenuItem class. You may create your own menu items,
each with its own title and action selector, and add them to the
editing menu through this property. Custom items appear in the menu
after any system menu items.

So you are obliged to use UIMenuItem objects as content for your UIMenuController. UIMenuItem only inherits from NSObject, and stores only a title and an action, both required. This make you unable to use any other kind of data as UIMenuItem.

As it is not an UIView, you can give it a UIButton or a UIImageView.

You could think to override UIMenuController but again it is a direct child of NSObject, so it doesn’t have any behavior for customization.

The only solution left to you, is to rewrite your own UIMenuController, deriving it from UIToolbar for example. This would give you more or less the same look, you just have to customize the arrow and the round corner.