iOS 17 crash with presenting modal view controller on itself using deprecated keyWindow

Question

Since the upgrade from iOS 15 to iOS 17, my iPad app has been crashing when I try to display modal popovers with the following error and I am unable to resolve the issue:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: 'Application tried to present modal view controller on itself. Presenting controller is <VolumeVC: 0x7fc81882c520>.'

For context, I've been using the following utility class throughout my app to first get the top most view controller in the window so that I can then display a modal popover with a view controller in it.

Utility.m

+ (UIViewController*)topViewController {
        
    UIViewController *topVC = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow].rootViewController;
    NSLog(@"Utility::topViewController(): topVC is: %@", topVC);
    
    int countLoops = 0;
    while (topVC.presentedViewController != nil) {
        topVC = topVC.presentedViewController;
        NSLog(@"Utility::topViewController(): In loop, topVC is: %@, countLoops is: %i", topVC, countLoops);
        countLoops++;
        if (countLoops > 25) { break; }
    } 
    return topVC;
}

+ (void)showDialogiPad:(UIViewController *)contentVC
       fromPresentingVC:(UIViewController *)presentingVC
                 inView:(UIView *)view
                atFrame:(CGRect)frame
          withDirection:(UIPopoverArrowDirection)direction {
    
    // Choose the presentation style in which the content is displayed in a popover view
    contentVC.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationPopover;
    
    // Set the popover size, anchor location and direction
    contentVC.popoverPresentationController.sourceRect = frame;
    contentVC.popoverPresentationController.sourceView = view;
    contentVC.popoverPresentationController.permittedArrowDirections = direction;
   
    // Set the arrow direction for the popover
    popoverVC.permittedArrowDirections = direction;
    
    // Present the popover presentation controller
    [presentingVC presentViewController:contentVC animated:YES completion:nil];
}

An example of how this gets called from elsewhere in the code is the following:

    // Show the volume view controller in a popover
    [Utility showDialogiPad:volumeVC // volumeVC is a simple view controller I want to show in the popup
        fromPresentingVC:[Utility topViewController]
                  inView:view
                 atFrame:frame
           withDirection:UIPopoverArrowDirectionAny];

A few notes:

• This code will work 1 to N times of opening & closing the popover but it will always eventually crash as of iOS 17. The crash always seems to happen when I open and close the popover quickly in succession.
• frame and view are always populated with the correct values, and volumeVC and presentingVC are always non-nil when I print them out in the Utility::showDialogiPad dialog method.
• When it crashes, the output of the debug statements in + (UIViewController*)topViewController are:

Utility::topViewController(): topVC is: <UITabBarController: 0x7fc22d81ae00>
Utility::topViewController(): In loop, topVC is: <VolumeVC: 0x7fc22d01f460>, countLoops is: 0

• The main window of the app is a UITabBarController with a UISplitViewController in each tab.
• This app does not have multiple scenes in it nor does it use UIWindowScene.
• I know keyWindow is deprecated as of iOS 13. When I replace the topViewController code with the following:

+ (UIViewController*)topViewController {
    UIWindowScene *windowScene = (UIWindowScene *)[UIApplication sharedApplication].connectedScenes.allObjects.firstObject;
    UIViewController *topVC = windowScene.windows.firstObject.rootViewController;    
    return topVC;
}

It will work 1 to N times but eventually it will crash with this error:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSGenericException', reason: 'UIPopoverPresentationController (<UIPopoverPresentationController: 0x7ff05c156890>) should have a non-nil sourceView or barButtonItem set before the presentation occurs.'

Thanks for any assistance with this.