What’s new in SwiftUI?

What’s New in SwiftUI

SwiftUI has introduced a variety of new features and improvements this year. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Graphics Capabilities:

   • Color Mixing: A new mix modifier on Color allows blending colors by a given amount.
   • Custom Shaders: Extended to precompile shaders before their first use to avoid frame drops caused by lazy shader compilation.

2. Scroll View Enhancements:

   • Fine-Grained Control: New APIs provide more control over scroll views, including reacting to changes in content offsets and sizes.
   • Visibility Detection: Detect when a view's visibility changes due to scrolling, enabling experiences like auto-playing videos.
   • Scroll Positions: More scroll positions to programmatically scroll to, such as the top edge.
   • Content Alignment: Control over content alignment and the ability to turn off bouncing along a given axis.

3. Accessibility:

   • Accessibility Labels: Add additional accessibility information to controls without overriding the framework-provided label.
   • Conditional Modifier Support: New accessibility features such as conditional modifier support and app intent-based accessibility actions.

4. Xcode Previews:

   • Dynamic Linking Architecture: Allows switching between a preview and build and run without needing to rebuild the project.
   • Previewable Macro: Use state directly in previews, eliminating the need for boilerplate code.

5. Text and Selection:

   • Programmatic Text Selection: Control text selection within text editing controls programmatically.

6. Interoperability:

   • UIKit and AppKit Integration: Improved integration with UIKit and AppKit, including gesture recognition and animations.
   • Custom Animations: Set up animations on UIKit or AppKit views and drive them with SwiftUI.

7. Swift 6 Language Mode:

   • Compile-Time Data Race Safety: New language mode enables compile-time data race safety.
   • Main Actor Annotation: Views in SwiftUI are now marked with the main actor annotation, isolating them to the main actor by default.

8. Custom Containers and Mesh Gradients:

   • Custom Containers: New APIs for creating custom containers.
   • Mesh Gradients: Beautiful mesh gradients for more visually appealing designs.

For a detailed overview, you can watch the session What’s new in SwiftUI.

Relevant Sessions

• What’s new in SwiftUI
• Platforms State of the Union
• What’s new in UIKit
• What’s new in watchOS 11