Leaking views when changing rootViewController inside transitionWithView

I had a similar issue recently. I had to manually remove that UITransitionView from the window to fix the problem, then call dismiss on the previous root view controller to ensure its deallocated.

The fix is not really very nice but unless you’ve found a better way since posting the question, its the only thing I’ve found to work! viewController is just the newController from your original question.

UIViewController *previousRootViewController = self.window.rootViewController;

self.window.rootViewController = viewController;

// Nasty hack to fix http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26763020/leaking-views-when-changing-rootviewcontroller-inside-transitionwithview
// The presenting view controllers view doesn't get removed from the window as its currently transistioning and presenting a view controller
for (UIView *subview in self.window.subviews) {
    if ([subview isKindOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UITransitionView")]) {
        [subview removeFromSuperview];
    }
}
// Allow the view controller to be deallocated
[previousRootViewController dismissViewControllerAnimated:NO completion:^{
    // Remove the root view in case its still showing
    [previousRootViewController.view removeFromSuperview];
}];

Swift 3.0

(See edit history for other Swift versions)

For a nicer implementation as a extension on UIWindow allowing an optional transition to be passed in.

extension UIWindow {
    
    /// Fix for http://stackoverflow.com/a/27153956/849645
    func set(rootViewController newRootViewController: UIViewController, withTransition transition: CATransition? = nil) {
        
        let previousViewController = rootViewController
        
        if let transition = transition {
            // Add the transition
            layer.add(transition, forKey: kCATransition)
        }
        
        rootViewController = newRootViewController
        
        // Update status bar appearance using the new view controllers appearance - animate if needed
        if UIView.areAnimationsEnabled {
            UIView.animate(withDuration: CATransaction.animationDuration()) {
                newRootViewController.setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate()
            }
        } else {
            newRootViewController.setNeedsStatusBarAppearanceUpdate()
        }

        if #available(iOS 13.0, *) {
            // In iOS 13 we don't want to remove the transition view as it'll create a blank screen
        } else {
            // The presenting view controllers view doesn't get removed from the window as its currently transistioning and presenting a view controller
            if let transitionViewClass = NSClassFromString("UITransitionView") {
                for subview in subviews where subview.isKind(of: transitionViewClass) {
                    subview.removeFromSuperview()
                }
            }
        }
        if let previousViewController = previousViewController {
            // Allow the view controller to be deallocated
            previousViewController.dismiss(animated: false) {
                // Remove the root view in case its still showing
                previousViewController.view.removeFromSuperview()
            }
        }
    }
}

Usage:

window.set(rootViewController: viewController)

Or

let transition = CATransition()
transition.type = kCATransitionFade
window.set(rootViewController: viewController, withTransition: transition)