Determine if UIView is visible to the user?

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.

I benchmarked both @Audrey M. and @John Gibb their solutions.
And @Audrey M. his way performed better (times 10).
So I used that one to make it observable.

I made a RxSwift Observable, to get notified when the UIView became visible.
This could be useful if you want to trigger a banner 'view' event

import Foundation
import UIKit
import RxSwift

extension UIView {
    var isVisibleToUser: Bool {

        if isHidden || alpha == 0 || superview == nil {
            return false
        }

        guard let rootViewController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.rootViewController else {
            return false
        }

        let viewFrame = convert(bounds, to: rootViewController.view)

        let topSafeArea: CGFloat
        let bottomSafeArea: CGFloat

        if #available(iOS 11.0, *) {
            topSafeArea = rootViewController.view.safeAreaInsets.top
            bottomSafeArea = rootViewController.view.safeAreaInsets.bottom
        } else {
            topSafeArea = rootViewController.topLayoutGuide.length
            bottomSafeArea = rootViewController.bottomLayoutGuide.length
        }

        return viewFrame.minX >= 0 &&
            viewFrame.maxX <= rootViewController.view.bounds.width &&
            viewFrame.minY >= topSafeArea &&
            viewFrame.maxY <= rootViewController.view.bounds.height - bottomSafeArea

    }
}

extension Reactive where Base: UIView {
    var isVisibleToUser: Observable<Bool> {
        // Every second this will check `isVisibleToUser`
        return Observable<Int>.interval(.milliseconds(1000),
                                        scheduler: MainScheduler.instance)
        .map { [base] _ in
            return base.isVisibleToUser
        }.distinctUntilChanged()
    }
}

Use it as like this:

import RxSwift
import UIKit
import Foundation

private let disposeBag = DisposeBag()

private func _checkBannerVisibility() {

    bannerView.rx.isVisibleToUser
        .filter { $0 }
        .take(1) // Only trigger it once
        .subscribe(onNext: { [weak self] _ in
            // ... Do something
        }).disposed(by: disposeBag)
}

Tested solution.

func isVisible(_ view: UIView) -> Bool {
    if view.isHidden || view.superview == nil {
        return false
    }

    if let rootViewController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow?.rootViewController,
        let rootView = rootViewController.view {

        let viewFrame = view.convert(view.bounds, to: rootView)

        let topSafeArea: CGFloat
        let bottomSafeArea: CGFloat

        if #available(iOS 11.0, *) {
            topSafeArea = rootView.safeAreaInsets.top
            bottomSafeArea = rootView.safeAreaInsets.bottom
        } else {
            topSafeArea = rootViewController.topLayoutGuide.length
            bottomSafeArea = rootViewController.bottomLayoutGuide.length
        }

        return viewFrame.minX >= 0 &&
               viewFrame.maxX <= rootView.bounds.width &&
               viewFrame.minY >= topSafeArea &&
               viewFrame.maxY <= rootView.bounds.height - bottomSafeArea
    }

    return false
}

Another useful method is didMoveToWindow() Example: When you push view controller, views of your previous view controller will call this method. Checking self.window != nil inside of didMoveToWindow() helps to know whether your view is appearing or disappearing from the screen.

The simplest Swift 5 solution I could come up with that worked in my situation (I was looking for a button embedded in my tableViewFooter).

John Gibbs solution also worked but in my cause I did not need all the recursion.

    func scrollViewDidScroll(_ scrollView: UIScrollView) {
        let viewFrame = scrollView.convert(targetView.bounds, from: targetView)
        if viewFrame.intersects(scrollView.bounds) {
            // targetView is visible 
        }
        else {
            // targetView is not visible
        }
    }

try this:

func isDisplayedInScreen() -> Bool
{
 if (self == nil) {
     return false
  }
    let screenRect = UIScreen.main.bounds 
    // 
    let rect = self.convert(self.frame, from: nil)
    if (rect.isEmpty || rect.isNull) {
        return false
    }
    // 若view 隐藏
    if (self.isHidden) {
        return false
    }

    // 
    if (self.superview == nil) {
        return false
    }
    // 
    if (rect.size.equalTo(CGSize.zero)) {
        return  false
    }
    //
    let intersectionRect = rect.intersection(screenRect)
    if (intersectionRect.isEmpty || intersectionRect.isNull) {
        return false
    }
    return true
}