I feel like this should be obvious to me, but for some reason I can't figure this out. I have a navigation interface with nav bar, tool bar, and primary view. Sometimes the user takes an action that causes a progress indicator to appear in the middle of the view.

While the progress indicator (which is a custom UIView) in spinning in the middle, I want no touch input to be allowed to go to any of the underlying interface (main view, nav bar, toolbar, etc). But this doesn't seem trivial.

I've tried (and failed) to create a simple view whose only job is to swallow touch input and use it as a window subview-- no dice, it never gets the touch events (and yes, it does have userInteractionEnabled). I've tried to bolt it on as a transparent modal view controller, but those don't seem to ever be transparent.

Thoughts? What am I missing?

Thanks!