For anyone else that ends up here:
To determine if a UIView is onscreen somewhere, rather than checking superview != nil, it is better to check if window != nil. In the former case, it is possible that the view has a superview but that the superview is not on screen:
if (view.window != nil) {
// do stuff
}
Of course you should also check if it is hidden or if it has an alpha > 0.
Regarding not wanting your NSTimer running while the view is not visible, you should hide these views manually if possible and have the timer stop when the view is hidden. However, I’m not at all sure of what you’re doing.