What’s new in SwiftUI

Key Takeaways

• 🔍 Set any tab to prominent appearance

• ↔️ Customize toolbar placement & overflow

• 🗂️ Reordering & swipe actions for any view

• 📄 Improved document handling

• 🏎️ Many performance improvements

Presenters

• Julia Vashchenko, UI Frameworks Engineer

• Steven Peterson, UI Frameworks Engineer

Refreshed look and feel

• Refined Liquid Glass look will be applied automatically

• Use .appearsActive environment to conditionally change styles when window is active or inactive (aka in background)

• Menu bar items reduce use of icons again (more details in HIG)

  • Use .labelStyle(.titleAndIcon) to manually show icon when it makes sense to highlight it

• iPhone apps are now automatically resizable

  • Check out Modernize your UIKit app on how to handle mix between SwiftUI and UIKit

• Use Tab(role: .prominent) to get separated out tab at trailing edge of Tab Bar

Toolbar Enhancements

More options to define placement & overflow of toolbar items:

Visibility priorityOverflow menuPinned trailing placementMinimize when scrolling

Use .visibilityPriority(.high) to lower chance of items moving to overflow menu.

Group items in ToolbarOverflowMenu container to always place them in overflow menu.

Use ToolbarItem(placement: .topBarPinnedTrailing) to place item behind overflow menu.

Use .toolbarMinimizeBehavior(.onScrollDown, for: .navigationBar) to hide toolbars on scroll.

Document-based apps

Document creation context

Use DocumentCreationSource API to define different sources as starting point:

@main
struct Stickers: App {
    var body: some Scene {
        DocumentGroupLaunchScene("Create a Sticker Page") {
            NewDocumentButton("New Sticker Page", source: .blank)
            NewDocumentButton("Sticker Page from Photo…", source: .photo)
        }
        
        DocumentGroup { document in
            StickerPageDocumentView(document)
        } { configuration, context in
            StickerPageDocument(configuration: configuration, context: context)
        }
    }
}
  
extension DocumentCreationSource {
    static let blank = Self(id: "blank")
    static let photo = Self(id: "photo")
}

Performance

Using @Observable macro alone gives performance boost and supports snapshot-based diffing for efficient updates.

Use WritableDocument protocol to write to documents with snapshot-based optimization:

@Observable
final class StickerDocument: WritableDocument {
    
    static let writableDocumentTypes: [UTType] = [.stickerDocument]
  
    @MainActor
    func snapshot(contentType: UTType) async throws -> sending PageSnapshot {
        makeSnapshot()
    }
      
    func writer(configuration: sending WriteConfiguration) -> sending Writer {
        Writer(contentType: configuration.contentType)
    }
}
    
struct PageSnapshot {
    var background: Image
    var metadata: StickerPlacements
    var stickers: [Image]
}

• Use Snapshot notion in DocumentWriter for further performance improvements:

struct Writer<Snapshot>: DocumentWriter {
    typealias Snapshot = PageSnapshot
  
    let contentType: UTType
    
    nonisolated func write(
        snapshot: sending PageSnapshot, to destination: URL,
        previous: sending PageSnapshot, progress: consuming Subprogress
    ) async throws {
        // report progress…
        // write .stickerDocument
    }
}

• Use ReadableDocument protocol to read from documents

  • Twin to WritableDocument

First-class support for URL access

• Extend writer to safe document in any different formats like PNG

• Add new format type to writableDocumentTypes (see above)

• Use conforms(to:) check to handle different

struct Writer<Snapshot>: DocumentWriter {
    typealias Snapshot = PageSnapshot

    let contentType: UTType

    nonisolated func write(
        snapshot: sending PageSnapshot, to destination: URL, 
        previous: sending PageSnapshot, progress: consuming Subprogress
    ) async throws {
        if contentType.conforms(to: .stickerDocument) {  
            // write .stickerDocument
        } else if contentType.conforms(to: .png) {
            let context = CGContext(/* ... */) 
            context.draw(/* ... */)
        }
    }
}

Presentation and interaction

Reorderable containers

Add support for reordering List or any container like grids via reorderable API:

LazyVGrid {
    ForEach(stickers) { sticker in
        StickerListItemView(sticker: sticker)
    }
    .reorderable()
}
.reorderContainer(for: Sticker.self) { difference in
    difference.apply(to: &stickers)
}

Swipe actions on any view

The .swipeActions modifier now also works on any view:

ScrollView {
    LazyVStack {
        ForEach(stickers) { sticker in
            StickerListItemView(sticker: sticker)
                .swipeActions {
                    DeleteButton(sticker: sticker)
                }
        }
    }
}
.swipeActionsContainer()

Confirmation dialogs with item binding

.confirmationDialog and .alert now also support item binding like sheets:

Data flow and performance

• AsyncImage now uses standard HTTP caching by default

  • Customizable via URLRequest

• Use custom URLCache in URLSession for custom cache sizes

  • Applied via .asyncImageURLSession

• @State properties are now lazy, thus will only be initialized once

  • New behavior backported to iOS 17, macOS 14, and aligned releases

• Unified @ContentBuilder improves type checking performance

  • Usable with any minimum deployment target

• New agent skills for Xcode 27:

  • SwiftUI Specialist Skill

  • What’s New In SwiftUI Skill

Next Steps

• Build your project for the 2027 releases

• Check out the refined look and feel of Liquid Glass in your app

• Level up your document-based app with the new Document API

• Use the SwiftUI agent skills in Xcode 27