what is this? And how do i access it? Using swift

You already know that it's a UIActivityIndicatorView.

You can drop it into your view in a Storyboard or XIB file, or you can add it programatically. It's part of the iOS SDK.

To change the style, there are UIActivityIndicatorStyles you can set when calling 'initWithActivityIndicatorStyle:' programatically or in the attribute section of your storyboard/xib file.

I think it's a custom spinner, created with MBProgressHUD.

MBProgressHUD is an iOS drop-in class that displays a translucent HUD with an indicator and/or labels while work is being done in a background thread. The HUD is meant as a replacement for the undocumented, private UIKit UIProgressHUD with some additional features.

A basic use:

[MBProgressHUD showHUDAddedTo:self.view animated:YES]; dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue( DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_LOW, 0), ^{ // do your stuff while spinner is showing dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{ [MBProgressHUD hideHUDForView:self.view animated:YES]; // stop the spinner }); }); 

For use this in Swift see this answer.

it's the UIActivityIndicatorView provided by iOS SDK, and we can set background color of UIActivityIndicatorView

UIActivityIndicatorView *spinner = [[UIActivityIndicatorView alloc] initWithActivityIndicatorStyle:UIActivityIndicatorViewStyleWhiteLarge]; spinner.backgroundColor = [UIColor grayColor];