ViewDidAppear is not called when opening app from background

Using Objective-C

You should register a UIApplicationWillEnterForegroundNotification in your ViewController's viewDidLoad method and whenever app comes back from background you can do whatever you want to do in the method registered for notification. ViewController's viewWillAppear or viewDidAppear won't be called when app comes back from background to foreground.

-(void)viewDidLoad{

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(doYourStuff)

  name:UIApplicationWillEnterForegroundNotification object:nil];
}

-(void)doYourStuff{

   // do whatever you want to do when app comes back from background.
}

Don't forget to unregister the notification you are registered for.

-(void)dealloc {
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self];
}

Note if you register your viewController for UIApplicationDidBecomeActiveNotification then your method would be called every time your app becomes active, It is not recommended to register viewController for this notification .

Using Swift

For adding observer you can use the following code

 override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()

     NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: "doYourStuff", name: UIApplication.willEnterForegroundNotification, object: nil)
 }

 func doYourStuff(){
     // your code
 }

To remove observer you can use deinit function of swift.

deinit {
    NotificationCenter.default.removeObserver(self)
}

Curious about the exact sequence of events, I instrumented an app as follows: (@Zohaib, you can use the NSNotificationCenter code below to answer your question).

// AppDelegate.m

- (void)applicationWillEnterForeground:(UIApplication *)application
{
    NSLog(@"app will enter foreground");
}

- (void)applicationDidBecomeActive:(UIApplication *)application
{
    NSLog(@"app did become active");
}

// ViewController.m

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    NSLog(@"view did load");

    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(appDidBecomeActive:) name:UIApplicationDidBecomeActiveNotification object:nil];
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(appWillEnterForeground:) name:UIApplicationWillEnterForegroundNotification object:nil];
}

- (void)appDidBecomeActive:(NSNotification *)notification {
    NSLog(@"did become active notification");
}

- (void)appWillEnterForeground:(NSNotification *)notification {
    NSLog(@"will enter foreground notification");
}

- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewWillAppear:animated];
    NSLog(@"view will appear");
}

- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
    [super viewDidAppear:animated];
    NSLog(@"view did appear");
}

At launch, the output looks like this:

2013-04-07 09:31:06.505 myapp[15459:11303] view did load
2013-04-07 09:31:06.507 myapp[15459:11303] view will appear
2013-04-07 09:31:06.511 myapp[15459:11303] app did become active
2013-04-07 09:31:06.512 myapp[15459:11303] did become active notification
2013-04-07 09:31:06.517 myapp[15459:11303] view did appear

Enter the background then reenter the foreground:

2013-04-07 09:32:05.923 myapp[15459:11303] app will enter foreground
2013-04-07 09:32:05.924 myapp[15459:11303] will enter foreground notification
2013-04-07 09:32:05.925 myapp[15459:11303] app did become active
2013-04-07 09:32:05.926 myapp[15459:11303] did become active notification

Swift 3.0 ++ version

In your viewDidLoad, register at notification center to listen to this opened from background action

NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector:#selector(doSomething), name: NSNotification.Name.UIApplicationWillEnterForeground, object: nil)
        

Then add this function and perform needed action

func doSomething(){
    //...
}

Finally add this function to clean up the notification observer when your view controller is destroyed.

deinit {
    NotificationCenter.default.removeObserver(self)
}