Why are IBOutlets “weak”? - Quora. because the super view is the primary owner of the object. you only want to reference it weakly so the OS can create and destroy them on will. If you had a strong pointer to it, you would retain the view strongly and it won't be deallocated when needed.

Do IBOutlets need to be weak?

The official answer from Apple is that IBOutlets should be strong. The only case when an IBOutlet should be weak is to avoid a retain cycle. A strong reference cycle can result in memory leaks and app crashes.

Why are IBOutlets weak in IOS?

Outlets that you create will therefore typically be weak by default, because: Outlets that you create to, for example, subviews of a view controller's view or a window controller's window, are arbitrary references between objects that do not imply ownership.