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.