FocusedValue and FocusedBinding property wrappers in SwiftUI

The last year Apple has done a great job in terms of focus management in SwiftUI. We got a few new modifiers to set up an entry point for the focus system and programmatically handle focus changes. We still have some gaps, and I hope Apple will fill them during WWDC21. This week I want to talk about FocusedValue, FocusedObject, and FocusedBinding property wrappers.

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FocusedValue

FocusedValue property wrapper allows us to observe the value from the focused view or one of its ancestors. It works in a very similar way to the Environment property wrapper, but instead of observing the environment, it observes the view hierarchy’s focused view.

To learn more about the basics of focus management in SwiftUI, take a look at my dedicated post.

To start using this feature, you should first create a struct that conforms to FocusedValueKey to define the type of value you want to observe. Assume that we are working on the note-taking app, and we want to monitor the content of the focused note editor. Let’s try to implement this.

struct FocusedNoteValue: FocusedValueKey {
    typealias Value = String
}

As you can see in the example above, we create the FocusedNoteValue struct and conform to the FocusedValueKey protocol. The only thing we need to do is adding a type alias for the Value type. The Value type here is our content that we want to observe when a view is focused. In our case, it is String because we want to monitor the note that the user edits at the moment.

extension FocusedValues {
    var noteValue: FocusedNoteValue.Value? {
        get { self[FocusedNoteValue.self] }
        set { self[FocusedNoteValue.self] = newValue }
    }
}

Here we provide an extension for FocusedValues where we register a getter and setter for our custom focused value. Make sure it is optional. SwiftUI set it to nil when the view is not focused.

To learn more about providing custom values via SwiftUI’s Environment, take a look at my “The power of Environment in SwiftUI” post.

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        Group {
            NoteEditor()
            NotePreview()
        }.border(Color.red)
    }
}

struct NoteEditor: View {
    @State private var note = "text"

    var body: some View {
        TextEditor(text: $note)
            .frame(width: 300, height: 300)
            .focusedValue(\.noteValue, note)
    }
}

struct NotePreview: View {
    @FocusedValue(\.noteValue) var note

    var body: some View {
        Text(note ?? "Note is not focused")
    }
}

Here we have the ContentView with NoteEditor that uses a binding from the view state to store the note content. We use the focusedValue modifier to save note content into the special memory that SwiftUI control and only assign when the view is focused.

We also define the NotePreview view. NotePreview uses the FocusedValue property wrapper to monitor the content of the focused note. SwiftUI will set the value of FocusedValue to nil as soon as the view loses the focus.

You can use the focusedSceneValue view modifier whenever you need to share focused value between views in different scenes.

FocusedObject

The FocusedValue property wrapper and view modifier works great for value types. But if you need this behavior for a class conforming to the ObservableObject protocol you can use the pair of the focusedObject view modifier and FocusedObject property wrapper.

You can use the focusedSceneObject view modifier whenever you need to share focused object between views in different scenes.

FocusedBinding

OK, we learned how to pass a read-only value for a recently focused note. But what if we want to modify it? For example, we can have a NoteFormatter view that formats the note’s content and overrides it. We can’t achieve it with the FocusedValue property wrapper because it provides us a get-only value.

In this case, we can use the FocusedBinding property wrapper. It works in the very same way, but instead of the read-only value, it provides a binding that we can use to override the content. Let’s start by extending the FocusedValues struct with a custom key for note content binding.

struct FocusedNoteBinding: FocusedValueKey {
    typealias Value = Binding<String>
}

extension FocusedValues {
    var noteBinding: FocusedNoteBinding.Value? {
        get { self[FocusedNoteBinding.self] }
        set { self[FocusedNoteBinding.self] = newValue }
    }
}

Now we can create the NoteFormatter view, which uses the FocusedBinding property wrapper, and override the note content using the binding.

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        Group {
            NoteEditor()
            NoteFormatter()
        }.border(Color.red)
    }
}

struct NoteEditor: View {
    @State private var note = "text"

    var body: some View {
        TextEditor(text: $note)
            .frame(width: 300, height: 300)
            .focusedValue(\.noteBinding, $note)
    }
}

struct NoteFormatter: View {
    @FocusedBinding(\.noteBinding) var note

    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            Text(note ?? "Note is not focused")
            Button("Clear note") {
                note = ""
            }
        }
    }
}

Conclusion

Today we learned how to use FocusedValue, FocusedObject, and FocusedBinding property wrappers. One of the possible use cases for these property wrappers is commands that we can use to create the main menu for macOS apps. You can access the currently focused view’s content and implement some logic that lives in your macOS app’s main menu.

To learn more about building the main menu for macOS apps, take a look at my “Commands in SwiftUI” post.

I hope you enjoy the post. Feel free to follow me on Twitter and ask your questions related to this article. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!