Hiding the master view controller with UISplitViewController in iOS8

Extend the UISplitViewController as follows:

extension UISplitViewController {
    func toggleMasterView() {
        let barButtonItem = self.displayModeButtonItem()
        UIApplication.sharedApplication().sendAction(barButtonItem.action, to: barButtonItem.target, from: nil, forEvent: nil)
    }
}

In didSelectRowAtIndexPath or prepareForSegue, do the following:

self.splitViewController?.toggleMasterView()

This will smoothly slide the master view out of the way.

I got the idea of using the displayModeButtonItem() from this post and I am simulating a tap on it per this post.

I am not really happy with this solution, since it seems like a hack. But it works well and there seems to be no alternative yet.