If I drop support for iOS 16, what new SwiftUI features can I use in my iOS app?

Asked on 09/24/2024

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If you drop support for iOS 16 and start using the iOS 18 SDK, you can take advantage of several new SwiftUI features in your iOS app. Here are some of the highlights from WWDC 2024:

  1. Improved Interoperability: SwiftUI has enhanced its interoperability with UIKit and AppKit, allowing you to use built-in or custom UI gesture recognizers in your SwiftUI view hierarchy. This improvement facilitates better integration between SwiftUI and other frameworks (Platforms State of the Union).

  2. Custom Animations: You can now set up animations on UIKit or AppKit views and drive them with SwiftUI, including fully custom animations (Platforms State of the Union).

  3. Custom Containers and Mesh Gradients: SwiftUI introduces custom containers and mesh gradients, providing more flexibility and customization options for your app's UI (Platforms State of the Union).

  4. Scrolling Enhancements: There are new scrolling customizations available, allowing you to fine-tune the scrolling behavior in your apps (What’s new in SwiftUI).

  5. Swift 6 Language Mode: SwiftUI views are now implicitly isolated to the main actor by default, which simplifies concurrency management in your app. This is part of the new Swift 6 language mode, which you can opt into (What’s new in SwiftUI).

These features, along with others like custom hover effects for visionOS and new text renderer APIs, make SwiftUI a powerful tool for building modern, interactive, and visually appealing iOS apps.

What’s new in SwiftUI

What’s new in SwiftUI

Learn how you can use SwiftUI to build great apps for any Apple platform. Explore a fresh new look and feel for tabs and documents on iPadOS. Improve your window management with new windowing APIs, and gain more control over immersive spaces and volumes in your visionOS apps. We’ll also take you through other exciting refinements that help you make expressive charts, customize and layout text, and so much more.

Migrate your app to Swift 6

Migrate your app to Swift 6

Experience Swift 6 migration in action as we update an existing sample app. Learn how to migrate incrementally, module by module, and how the compiler helps you identify code that’s at risk of data races. Discover different techniques for ensuring clear isolation boundaries and eliminating concurrent access to shared mutable state.

What’s new in UIKit

What’s new in UIKit

Explore everything new in UIKit, including tab and document launch experiences, transitions, and text and input changes. We’ll also discuss better-than-ever interoperability between UIKit and SwiftUI animations and gestures, as well as general improvements throughout UIKit.