I'm have difficulty adding a subview UIView from within the viewDidLoad method of a UITableViewController This works: [self.view addSubview:self.progView]; But you can see the table cell lines bleed through the UIView progView. I've tried this approach: [self.view.superview insertSubview:self.progView aboveSubview:self.view]; Which is an attempt to add the progView UIView to the superview, above the current view. When I try this I get this the UIView never appears.