SwiftUI

SwiftUI helps you build great-looking apps across all Apple platforms with the power of Swift — and as little code as possible. With SwiftUI, you can bring even better experiences to all users, on any Apple device, using just one set of tools and APIs.

What’s new in SwiftUI

Advanced app experiences and tools

Enhance your apps with new features, such as improved list views, better search experiences, and support for control focus areas. And gain more control over lower-level drawing primitives with the new Canvas API, a modern, GPU-accelerated equivalent of drawRect.

Accessibility improvements

Speed up interactions by exposing the most relevant items on a screen in a simple list using the new Rotor API. The current accessibility focus state, such as the VoiceOver cursor, can now be read and even changed programmatically. And with the new Accessibility Representation API, your custom controls easily inherit full accessibility support from existing standard SwiftUI controls.

SwiftUI improvements on macOS

New performance and API availability improvements, including support for multicolumn tables, make your macOS apps even better.

Always-On Retina Display support

On Apple Watch Series 5 and later, the Always-On Retina Display allows watchOS apps to stay visible, even when the watch face is dimmed, making key information available at a glance.

Widgets for iPadOS

Now widgets can be placed anywhere on the Home screen and increased to a new, extra-large widget size.

Declarative syntax

SwiftUI uses a declarative syntax, so you can simply state what your user interface should do. For example, you can write that you want a list of items consisting of text fields, then describe alignment, font, and color for each field. Your code is simpler and easier to read than ever before, saving you time and maintenance.

This declarative style even applies to complex concepts like animation. Easily add animation to almost any control and choose a collection of ready-to-use effects with only a few lines of code. At runtime, the system handles all of the steps needed to create a smooth movement, and even deals with interruption to keep your app stable. With animation this easy, you’ll be looking for new ways to make your app come alive.

Design tools

Xcode includes intuitive design tools that make building interfaces with SwiftUI as easy as dragging and dropping. As you work in the design canvas, everything you edit is completely in sync with the code in the adjoining editor. Code is instantly visible as a preview as you type, and any change you make to that preview immediately appears in your code. Xcode recompiles your changes instantly and inserts them into a running version of your app — visible, and editable at all times.

Drag and drop. Arrange components within your user interface by simply dragging controls on the canvas. Click to open an inspector to select font, color, alignment, and other design options, and easily rearrange controls with your cursor. Many of these visual editors are also available within the code editor, so you can use inspectors to discover new modifiers for each control, even if you prefer hand-coding parts of your interface. You can also drag controls from your library and drop them on the design canvas or directly on the code.

Dynamic replacement. The Swift compiler and runtime are fully embedded throughout Xcode, so your app is constantly being built and run. The design canvas you see isn’t just an approximation of your user interface — it’s your live app. And Xcode can swap edited code directly in your live app with “dynamic replacement,” a new feature in Swift.

Previews. You can now create one or many previews of any SwiftUI views to get sample data, and configure almost anything your users might see, such as large fonts, localizations, or Dark Mode. Previews can also display your UI in any device and any orientation.

Get started

Download Xcode and use these resources to build apps with SwiftUI for all Apple platforms.

Download Xcode