How to present UIAlertController when not in a view controller?

This works in Swift for normal view controllers and even if there is a navigation controller on the screen:

let alert = UIAlertController(...)

let alertWindow = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds)
alertWindow.rootViewController = UIViewController()
alertWindow.windowLevel = UIWindowLevelAlert + 1;
alertWindow.makeKeyAndVisible()
alertWindow.rootViewController?.presentViewController(alert, animated: true, completion: nil)

Adding on to Zev's answer (and switching back to Objective-C), you could run into a situation where your root view controller is presenting some other VC via a segue or something else. Calling presentedViewController on the root VC will take care of this:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication].keyWindow.rootViewController.presentedViewController presentViewController:alertController animated:YES completion:^{}];

This straightened out an issue I had where the root VC had segued to another VC, and instead of presenting the alert controller, a warning like those reported above was issued:

Warning: Attempt to present <UIAlertController: 0x145bfa30> on <UINavigationController: 0x1458e450> whose view is not in the window hierarchy!

I haven't tested it, but this may also be necessary if your root VC happens to be a navigation controller.

@agilityvision's answer translated to Swift4/iOS11. I haven't used localized strings, but you can change that easily:

import UIKit

/** An alert controller that can be called without a view controller.
 Creates a blank view controller and presents itself over that
 **/
class AlertPlusViewController: UIAlertController {

    private var alertWindow: UIWindow?

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
    }

    override func viewDidDisappear(_ animated: Bool) {
        super.viewDidDisappear(animated)
        self.alertWindow?.isHidden = true
        alertWindow = nil
    }

    func show() {
        self.showAnimated(animated: true)
    }

    func showAnimated(animated _: Bool) {

        let blankViewController = UIViewController()
        blankViewController.view.backgroundColor = UIColor.clear

        let window = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds)
        window.rootViewController = blankViewController
        window.backgroundColor = UIColor.clear
        window.windowLevel = UIWindowLevelAlert + 1
        window.makeKeyAndVisible()
        self.alertWindow = window

        blankViewController.present(self, animated: true, completion: nil)
    }

    func presentOkayAlertWithTitle(title: String?, message: String?) {

        let alertController = AlertPlusViewController(title: title, message: message, preferredStyle: .alert)
        let okayAction = UIAlertAction(title: "Ok", style: .default, handler: nil)
        alertController.addAction(okayAction)
        alertController.show()
    }

    func presentOkayAlertWithError(error: NSError?) {
        let title = "Error"
        let message = error?.localizedDescription
        presentOkayAlertWithTitle(title: title, message: message)
    }
}

For iOS 13, building on the answers by mythicalcoder and bobbyrehm:

In iOS 13, if you are creating your own window to present the alert in, you are required to hold a strong reference to that window or else your alert won't be displayed because the window will be immediately deallocated when its reference exits scope.

Furthermore, you'll need to set the reference to nil again after the alert is dismissed in order to remove the window to continue to allow user interaction on the main window below it.

You can create a UIViewController subclass to encapsulate the window memory management logic:

class WindowAlertPresentationController: UIViewController {

    // MARK: - Properties

    private lazy var window: UIWindow? = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds)
    private let alert: UIAlertController

    // MARK: - Initialization

    init(alert: UIAlertController) {

        self.alert = alert
        super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {

        fatalError("This initializer is not supported")
    }

    // MARK: - Presentation

    func present(animated: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)?) {

        window?.rootViewController = self
        window?.windowLevel = UIWindow.Level.alert + 1
        window?.makeKeyAndVisible()
        present(alert, animated: animated, completion: completion)
    }

    // MARK: - Overrides

    override func dismiss(animated flag: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)? = nil) {

        super.dismiss(animated: flag) {
            self.window = nil
            completion?()
        }
    }
}

You can use this as is, or if you want a convenience method on your UIAlertController, you can throw it in an extension:

extension UIAlertController {

    func presentInOwnWindow(animated: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)?) {

        let windowAlertPresentationController = WindowAlertPresentationController(alert: self)
        windowAlertPresentationController.present(animated: animated, completion: completion)
    }
}

Swift 5

It's important to hide the window after showing the message.

func showErrorMessage(_ message: String) {
    let alertWindow = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds)
    alertWindow.rootViewController = UIViewController()

    let alertController = UIAlertController(title: "Error", message: message, preferredStyle: UIAlertController.Style.alert)
    alertController.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "Close", style: UIAlertAction.Style.cancel, handler: { _ in
        alertWindow.isHidden = true
    }))
    
    alertWindow.windowLevel = UIWindow.Level.alert + 1;
    alertWindow.makeKeyAndVisible()
    alertWindow.rootViewController?.present(alertController, animated: true, completion: nil)
}

Create Extension like in Aviel Gross answer. Here You have Objective-C extension.

Here You have header file *.h

//  UIAlertController+Showable.h

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@interface UIAlertController (Showable)

- (void)show;

- (void)presentAnimated:(BOOL)animated
             completion:(void (^)(void))completion;

- (void)presentFromController:(UIViewController *)viewController
                     animated:(BOOL)animated
                   completion:(void (^)(void))completion;

@end

And implementation: *.m

//  UIAlertController+Showable.m

#import "UIAlertController+Showable.h"

@implementation UIAlertController (Showable)

- (void)show
{
    [self presentAnimated:YES completion:nil];
}

- (void)presentAnimated:(BOOL)animated
             completion:(void (^)(void))completion
{
    UIViewController *rootVC = [UIApplication sharedApplication].keyWindow.rootViewController;
    if (rootVC != nil) {
        [self presentFromController:rootVC animated:animated completion:completion];
    }
}

- (void)presentFromController:(UIViewController *)viewController
                     animated:(BOOL)animated
                   completion:(void (^)(void))completion
{

    if ([viewController isKindOfClass:[UINavigationController class]]) {
        UIViewController *visibleVC = ((UINavigationController *)viewController).visibleViewController;
        [self presentFromController:visibleVC animated:animated completion:completion];
    } else if ([viewController isKindOfClass:[UITabBarController class]]) {
        UIViewController *selectedVC = ((UITabBarController *)viewController).selectedViewController;
        [self presentFromController:selectedVC animated:animated completion:completion];
    } else {
        [viewController presentViewController:self animated:animated completion:completion];
    }
}

@end

You are using this extension in Your implementation file like this:

#import "UIAlertController+Showable.h"

UIAlertController* alert = [UIAlertController
    alertControllerWithTitle:@"Title here"
                     message:@"Detail message here"
              preferredStyle:UIAlertControllerStyleAlert];

UIAlertAction* defaultAction = [UIAlertAction
    actionWithTitle:@"OK"
              style:UIAlertActionStyleDefault
            handler:^(UIAlertAction * action) {}];
[alert addAction:defaultAction];

// Add more actions if needed

[alert show];

Swift 4+

Solution I use for years with no issues at all. First of all I extend UIWindow to find it's visibleViewController. NOTE: if you using custom collection* classes (such as side menu) you should add handler for this case in following extension. After getting top most view controller it's easy to present UIAlertController just like UIAlertView.

extension UIAlertController {

  func show(animated: Bool = true, completion: (() -> Void)? = nil) {
    if let visibleViewController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.visibleViewController {
      visibleViewController.present(self, animated: animated, completion: completion)
    }
  }

}

extension UIWindow {

  var visibleViewController: UIViewController? {
    guard let rootViewController = rootViewController else {
      return nil
    }
    return visibleViewController(for: rootViewController)
  }

  private func visibleViewController(for controller: UIViewController) -> UIViewController {
    var nextOnStackViewController: UIViewController? = nil
    if let presented = controller.presentedViewController {
      nextOnStackViewController = presented
    } else if let navigationController = controller as? UINavigationController,
      let visible = navigationController.visibleViewController {
      nextOnStackViewController = visible
    } else if let tabBarController = controller as? UITabBarController,
      let visible = (tabBarController.selectedViewController ??
        tabBarController.presentedViewController) {
      nextOnStackViewController = visible
    }

    if let nextOnStackViewController = nextOnStackViewController {
      return visibleViewController(for: nextOnStackViewController)
    } else {
      return controller
    }
  }

}

Cross post my answer since these two threads are not flagged as dupes...

Now that UIViewController is part of the responder chain, you can do something like this:

if let vc = self.nextResponder()?.targetForAction(#selector(UIViewController.presentViewController(_:animated:completion:)), withSender: self) as? UIViewController {

    let alert = UIAlertController(title: "A snappy title", message: "Something bad happened", preferredStyle: .Alert)
    alert.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "OK", style: .Default, handler: nil))

    vc.presentViewController(alert, animated: true, completion: nil)
}

Zev Eisenberg's answer is simple and straightforward, but it does not always work, and it may fail with this warning message:

Warning: Attempt to present <UIAlertController: 0x7fe6fd951e10>  
 on <ThisViewController: 0x7fe6fb409480> which is already presenting 
 <AnotherViewController: 0x7fe6fd109c00>

This is because the windows rootViewController is not at the top of the presented views. To correct this we need to walk up the presentation chain, as shown in my UIAlertController extension code written in Swift 3:

   /// show the alert in a view controller if specified; otherwise show from window's root pree
func show(inViewController: UIViewController?) {
    if let vc = inViewController {
        vc.present(self, animated: true, completion: nil)
    } else {
        // find the root, then walk up the chain
        var viewController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.rootViewController
        var presentedVC = viewController?.presentedViewController
        while presentedVC != nil {
            viewController = presentedVC
            presentedVC = viewController?.presentedViewController
        }
        // now we present
        viewController?.present(self, animated: true, completion: nil)
    }
}

func show() {
    show(inViewController: nil)
}

Updates on 9/15/2017:

Tested and confirmed that the above logic still works great in the newly available iOS 11 GM seed. The top voted method by agilityvision, however, does not: the alert view presented in a newly minted UIWindow is below the keyboard and potentially prevents the user from tapping its buttons. This is because in iOS 11 all windowLevels higher than that of keyboard window is lowered to a level below it.

One artifact of presenting from keyWindow though is the animation of keyboard sliding down when alert is presented, and sliding up again when alert is dismissed. If you want the keyboard to stay there during presentation, you can try to present from the top window itself, as shown in below code:

func show(inViewController: UIViewController?) {
    if let vc = inViewController {
        vc.present(self, animated: true, completion: nil)
    } else {
        // get a "solid" window with the highest level
        let alertWindow = UIApplication.shared.windows.filter { $0.tintColor != nil || $0.className() == "UIRemoteKeyboardWindow" }.sorted(by: { (w1, w2) -> Bool in
            return w1.windowLevel < w2.windowLevel
        }).last
        // save the top window's tint color
        let savedTintColor = alertWindow?.tintColor
        alertWindow?.tintColor = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.tintColor

        // walk up the presentation tree
        var viewController = alertWindow?.rootViewController
        while viewController?.presentedViewController != nil {
            viewController = viewController?.presentedViewController
        }

        viewController?.present(self, animated: true, completion: nil)
        // restore the top window's tint color
        if let tintColor = savedTintColor {
            alertWindow?.tintColor = tintColor
        }
    }
}

The only not so great part of the above code is that it checks the class name UIRemoteKeyboardWindow to make sure we can include it too. Nevertheless the above code does work great in iOS 9, 10 and 11 GM seed, with the right tint color and without the keyboard sliding artifacts.

Some of these answers only worked partly for me, combining them in the following class method in AppDelegate was the solution for me. It works on iPad, in UITabBarController views, in UINavigationController, en when presenting modals. Tested on iOS 10 and 13.

+ (UIViewController *)rootViewController {
    UIViewController *rootViewController = [UIApplication sharedApplication].delegate.window.rootViewController;
    if([rootViewController isKindOfClass:[UINavigationController class]])
        rootViewController = ((UINavigationController *)rootViewController).viewControllers.firstObject;
    if([rootViewController isKindOfClass:[UITabBarController class]])
        rootViewController = ((UITabBarController *)rootViewController).selectedViewController;
    if (rootViewController.presentedViewController != nil)
        rootViewController = rootViewController.presentedViewController;
    return rootViewController;
}

Usage:

[[AppDelegate rootViewController] presentViewController ...

Shorthand way to do present the alert in Objective-C:

[[[[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow] rootViewController] presentViewController:alertController animated:YES completion:nil];

Where alertController is your UIAlertController object.

NOTE: You'll also need to make sure your helper class extends UIViewController

If anyone is interested I created a Swift 3 version of @agilityvision answer. The code:

import Foundation
import UIKit

extension UIAlertController {

    var window: UIWindow? {
        get {
            return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, "window") as? UIWindow
        }
        set {
            objc_setAssociatedObject(self, "window", newValue, objc_AssociationPolicy.OBJC_ASSOCIATION_RETAIN_NONATOMIC)
        }
    }

    open override func viewDidDisappear(_ animated: Bool) {
        super.viewDidDisappear(animated)
        self.window?.isHidden = true
        self.window = nil
    }

    func show(animated: Bool = true) {
        let window = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds)
        window.rootViewController = UIViewController(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)

        let delegate = UIApplication.shared.delegate
        if delegate?.window != nil {
            window.tintColor = delegate!.window!!.tintColor
        }

        window.windowLevel = UIApplication.shared.windows.last!.windowLevel + 1

        window.makeKeyAndVisible()
        window.rootViewController!.present(self, animated: animated, completion: nil)

        self.window = window
    }
}

iOS13 scene support (when using UIWindowScene)

import UIKit

private var windows: [String:UIWindow] = [:]

extension UIWindowScene {
    static var focused: UIWindowScene? {
        return UIApplication.shared.connectedScenes
            .first { $0.activationState == .foregroundActive && $0 is UIWindowScene } as? UIWindowScene
    }
}

class StyledAlertController: UIAlertController {

    var wid: String?

    func present(animated: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)?) {

        //let window = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.main.bounds)
        guard let window = UIWindowScene.focused.map(UIWindow.init(windowScene:)) else {
            return
        }
        window.rootViewController = UIViewController()
        window.windowLevel = .alert + 1
        window.makeKeyAndVisible()
        window.rootViewController!.present(self, animated: animated, completion: completion)

        wid = UUID().uuidString
        windows[wid!] = window
    }

    open override func viewDidDisappear(_ animated: Bool) {
        super.viewDidDisappear(animated)
        if let wid = wid {
            windows[wid] = nil
        }

    }

}

Updated to work with iOS 13 Scenes which breaks the new UIWindow approach. Swift 5.1.

fileprivate var alertWindows = [UIAlertController:UIWindow]()

extension UIAlertController {

    func presentInNewWindow(animated: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)?) {
        let foregroundActiveScene = UIApplication.shared.connectedScenes.filter { $0.activationState == .foregroundActive }.first
        guard let foregroundWindowScene = foregroundActiveScene as? UIWindowScene else { return }

        let window = UIWindow(windowScene: foregroundWindowScene)
        alertWindows[self] = window

        window.rootViewController = UIViewController()
        window.windowLevel = .alert + 1
        window.makeKeyAndVisible()
        window.rootViewController!.present( self, animated: animated, completion: completion)
    }

    open override func viewDidDisappear(_ animated: Bool) {
        super.viewDidDisappear(animated)
        alertWindows[self] = nil
    }

}

Kevin Sliech provided a great solution.

I now use the below code in my main UIViewController subclass.

One small alteration i made was to check to see if the best presentation controller is not a plain UIViewController. If not, it's got to be some VC that presents a plain VC. Thus we return the VC that's being presented instead.

- (UIViewController *)bestPresentationController
{
    UIViewController *bestPresentationController = [UIApplication sharedApplication].keyWindow.rootViewController;

    if (![bestPresentationController isMemberOfClass:[UIViewController class]])
    {
        bestPresentationController = bestPresentationController.presentedViewController;
    }    

    return bestPresentationController;
}

Seems to all work out so far in my testing.

Thank you Kevin!

extension UIApplication {
    /// The top most view controller
    static var topMostViewController: UIViewController? {
        return UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.rootViewController?.visibleViewController
    }
}

extension UIViewController {
    /// The visible view controller from a given view controller
    var visibleViewController: UIViewController? {
        if let navigationController = self as? UINavigationController {
            return navigationController.topViewController?.visibleViewController
        } else if let tabBarController = self as? UITabBarController {
            return tabBarController.selectedViewController?.visibleViewController
        } else if let presentedViewController = presentedViewController {
            return presentedViewController.visibleViewController
        } else {
            return self
        }
    }
}

With this you can easily present your alert like so

UIApplication.topMostViewController?.present(viewController, animated: true, completion: nil)

One thing to note is that if there's a UIAlertController currently being displayed, UIApplication.topMostViewController will return a UIAlertController. Presenting on top of a UIAlertController has weird behavior and should be avoided. As such, you should either manually check that !(UIApplication.topMostViewController is UIAlertController) before presenting, or add an else if case to return nil if self is UIAlertController

extension UIViewController {
    /// The visible view controller from a given view controller
    var visibleViewController: UIViewController? {
        if let navigationController = self as? UINavigationController {
            return navigationController.topViewController?.visibleViewController
        } else if let tabBarController = self as? UITabBarController {
            return tabBarController.selectedViewController?.visibleViewController
        } else if let presentedViewController = presentedViewController {
            return presentedViewController.visibleViewController
        } else if self is UIAlertController {
            return nil
        } else {
            return self
        }
    }
}

You can send the current view or controller as a parameter:

+ (void)myUtilityMethod:(id)controller {
    // do stuff
    // something bad happened, display an alert.
}

In addition to great answers given (agilityvision, adib, malhal). To reach queueing behaviour like in good old UIAlertViews (avoid alert windows overlap), use this block to observe window level availability:

@interface UIWindow (WLWindowLevel)

+ (void)notifyWindowLevelIsAvailable:(UIWindowLevel)level withBlock:(void (^)())block;

@end

@implementation UIWindow (WLWindowLevel)

+ (void)notifyWindowLevelIsAvailable:(UIWindowLevel)level withBlock:(void (^)())block {
    UIWindow *keyWindow = [UIApplication sharedApplication].keyWindow;
    if (keyWindow.windowLevel == level) {
        // window level is occupied, listen for windows to hide
        id observer;
        observer = [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserverForName:UIWindowDidBecomeHiddenNotification object:keyWindow queue:nil usingBlock:^(NSNotification *note) {
            [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:observer];
            [self notifyWindowLevelIsAvailable:level withBlock:block]; // recursive retry
        }];

    } else {
        block(); // window level is available
    }
}

@end

Complete example:

[UIWindow notifyWindowLevelIsAvailable:UIWindowLevelAlert withBlock:^{
    UIWindow *alertWindow = [[UIWindow alloc] initWithFrame:[UIScreen mainScreen].bounds];
    alertWindow.windowLevel = UIWindowLevelAlert;
    alertWindow.rootViewController = [UIViewController new];
    [alertWindow makeKeyAndVisible];

    UIAlertController *alertController = [UIAlertController alertControllerWithTitle:@"Alert" message:nil preferredStyle:UIAlertControllerStyleAlert];
    [alertController addAction:[UIAlertAction actionWithTitle:@"OK" style:UIAlertActionStyleCancel handler:^(UIAlertAction *action) {
        alertWindow.hidden = YES;
    }]];

    [alertWindow.rootViewController presentViewController:alertController animated:YES completion:nil];
}];

This will allow you to avoid alert windows overlap. Same method can be used to separate and put in queue view controllers for any number of window layers.

Seems to work:

static UIViewController *viewControllerForView(UIView *view) {
    UIResponder *responder = view;
    do {
        responder = [responder nextResponder];
    }
    while (responder && ![responder isKindOfClass:[UIViewController class]]);
    return (UIViewController *)responder;
}

-(void)showActionSheet {
    UIAlertController *alertController = [UIAlertController alertControllerWithTitle:nil message:nil preferredStyle:UIAlertControllerStyleActionSheet];
    [alertController addAction:[UIAlertAction actionWithTitle:@"Cancel" style:UIAlertActionStyleCancel handler:nil]];
    [alertController addAction:[UIAlertAction actionWithTitle:@"Do it" style:UIAlertActionStyleDefault handler:nil]];
    [viewControllerForView(self) presentViewController:alertController animated:YES completion:nil];
}

I tried everything mentioned, but with no success. The method which I used for Swift 3.0 :

extension UIAlertController {
    func show() {
        present(animated: true, completion: nil)
    }

    func present(animated: Bool, completion: (() -> Void)?) {
        if var topController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.rootViewController {
            while let presentedViewController = topController.presentedViewController {
                topController = presentedViewController
            }
            topController.present(self, animated: animated, completion: completion)
        }
    }
}

Another option:

    var topController:UIViewController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow!.rootViewController!
    while ((topController.presentedViewController) != nil) {
        topController = topController.presentedViewController!
    }
    topController.present(alert, animated:true, completion:nil)

There 2 approaches that you can use:

-Use UIAlertView or 'UIActionSheet' instead (not recommended, cause it deprecated in iOS 8 but it works now)

-Somehow remember the last view controller which is presented. Here is example.

@interface UIViewController (TopController)
+ (UIViewController *)topViewController;
@end

// implementation

#import "UIViewController+TopController.h"
#import <objc/runtime.h>

static __weak UIViewController *_topViewController = nil;

@implementation UIViewController (TopController)

+ (UIViewController *)topViewController {
    UIViewController *vc = _topViewController;
    while (vc.parentViewController) {
        vc = vc.parentViewController;
    }
    return vc;
}

+ (void)load {
    [super load];
    [self swizzleSelector:@selector(viewDidAppear:) withSelector:@selector(myViewDidAppear:)];
    [self swizzleSelector:@selector(viewWillDisappear:) withSelector:@selector(myViewWillDisappear:)];
}

- (void)myViewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
    if (_topViewController == nil) {
        _topViewController = self;
    }

    [self myViewDidAppear:animated];
}

- (void)myViewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
    if (_topViewController == self) {
        _topViewController = nil;
    }

    [self myViewWillDisappear:animated];
}

+ (void)swizzleSelector:(SEL)sel1 withSelector:(SEL)sel2
{
    Class class = [self class];

    Method originalMethod = class_getInstanceMethod(class, sel1);
    Method swizzledMethod = class_getInstanceMethod(class, sel2);

    BOOL didAddMethod = class_addMethod(class,
                                        sel1,
                                        method_getImplementation(swizzledMethod),
                                        method_getTypeEncoding(swizzledMethod));

    if (didAddMethod) {
        class_replaceMethod(class,
                            sel2,
                            method_getImplementation(originalMethod),
                            method_getTypeEncoding(originalMethod));
    } else {
        method_exchangeImplementations(originalMethod, swizzledMethod);
    }
}

@end 

Usage:

[[UIViewController topViewController] presentViewController:alertController ...];