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

Asked on 01/20/2025

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If you drop support for iOS 16 and target newer versions, you can take advantage of several new SwiftUI features introduced at WWDC 2024. Here are some of the highlights:

  1. Graphics Capabilities: SwiftUI now includes a new mix modifier on colors, allowing you to blend colors beautifully. Additionally, custom shaders can be precompiled to avoid frame drops caused by lazy shader compilation.

  2. Scrolling Enhancements: You have more control over scroll views, including reacting to changes in content offsets and sizes with onScrollGeometryChange. You can also detect when a view's visibility changes due to scrolling, enabling experiences like auto-playing videos.

  3. Custom Containers and Mesh Gradients: New APIs for custom containers and mesh gradients allow for more creative and flexible UI designs.

  4. Swift 6 Language Mode: This mode introduces compile-time data race safety, and SwiftUI has improved its APIs to make it easier to adopt this new language mode.

  5. Improved Interoperability: Gesture recognition and animations have been improved, allowing for better integration between SwiftUI and UIKit/AppKit.

For more detailed information, you can refer to the session What’s new in SwiftUI (16:18) which covers scrolling enhancements and other new features.