You must not forget about UIViewControllers, that may be as UIViews the FirstResponder.

For that reason, you may loop into the UIViewController hierarchy, as well as into the UIView hierarchy.

@implementation UIView (FindFirstResponder) - (UIView *)findFirstResponder { if (self.isFirstResponder) { return self; } for (UIView *subView in self.subviews) { UIView *firstResponder = [subView findFirstResponder]; if (firstResponder != nil) { return firstResponder; } } return nil; } @end @implementation UIViewController (FindFirstResponder) - (id)findFirstResponder {  if (self.isFirstResponder) {    return self;  }  id firstResponder = [self.view findFirstResponder]; if (firstResponder != nil) { return firstResponder; } for (UIViewController *childViewController in self.childViewControllers) {  firstResponder = [childViewController findFirstResponder];     if (firstResponder != nil) {  return firstResponder;   }  }  return nil; }   @end 

So, now, in your method you can get the first responder simply by doing:

- (void)foo { UIWindow *mainWindow = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow]; UIResponder *firstResponder = [mainWindow.rootViewController findFirstResponder]; // Do what you want with your firstResponder } 

The first responder can be any instance of the class UIResponder, so there are other classes that might be the first responder despite the UIViews. For example UIViewController might also be the first responder.

In this gist you will find a recursive way to get the first responder by looping through the hierarchy of controllers starting from the rootViewController of the application's windows.

You can retrieve then the first responder by doing

- (void)foo { // Get the first responder id firstResponder = [UIResponder firstResponder]; // Do whatever you want [firstResponder resignFirstResponder]; } 

However, if the first responder is not a subclass of UIView or UIViewController, this approach will fail.

To fix this problem we can do a different approach by creating a category on UIResponder and perform some magic swizzeling to be able to build an array of all living instances of this class. Then, to get the first responder we can simple iterate and ask each object if -isFirstResponder.

This approach can be found implemented in this other gist.

Hope it helps.