Mastering Dynamic Island in SwiftUI

In the previous post, we talked about live activity widgets displaying your app’s ongoing events. Live activity widgets can utilize the dynamic island of the iPhone 14 Pro. In this post, we will discuss possible configurations and customization points of the dynamic island feature using the new API available in the WidgetKit framework.

Displaying live activities in iOS 16

One of the most prominent features of iOS 16 is live activity widgets. iOS 16 allows us to display the live state of ongoing activities from our apps on the lock screen or in the Dynamic Island of the new iPhone 14 Pro. This week we will learn how to build live activity widgets for our apps using the new ActivityKit framework.

Customizing toolbars in SwiftUI

Toolbars API is one of my favorite APIs in SwiftUI. It allows you to define the toolbar and its items in a very declarative way behaving differently on separate platforms. The next generation of the SwiftUI framework brings us more ways of customizing toolbars. This week we will learn about new Toolbar APIs in SwiftUI.

Lock screen widgets in SwiftUI

One of the most requested features for iOS was customizable lock screens. We can populate our lock screen with glanceable widgets. Implementing a lock screen widget is straightforward because its API shares the same code with home screen widgets. This week we will learn how to implement lock screen widgets for our apps.

Conditional layouts in SwiftUI

From the first day of the SwiftUI framework, we have primary layout containers like VStack, HStack, and ZStack. The current iteration of the SwiftUI framework brings another layout container allowing us to place views in a grid. But the most important addition was the Layout protocol that all layout containers conform to. It also allows us to build our super-custom layout containers from scratch. This week we will learn the basics of the Layout protocol in SwiftUI and how to build conditional layouts using AnyLayout type.

Mastering grid layout in SwiftUI

You might be familiar with the LazyVGrid and LazyHGrid views we have from the second iteration of the SwiftUI framework. They work great for the massive data arrays you want to display as the grid. But it is not always possible to arrange the columns and rows strictly because of their lazy nature.

Content transition in SwiftUI

View transitions are available from the very first version of the SwiftUI framework. The framework can apply a particular transition whenever the view is removed or added to the view hierarchy. The latest iteration of the SwiftUI framework brings us a new type of transition called content transitions. It allows us to apply a particular transition to the content of the view whenever it changes. This week we will learn how to use the new API to apply content transition in SwiftUI.

ViewThatFits in SwiftUI

How often did you use GeometryReader to measure layout and place different views? GeometryReader was always a great tool in our toolbox, but It is elementary to break the layout while using the GeometryReader. Fortunately, the next generation of the SwiftUI framework introduces a new way to measure available space and place different views. This week we will learn how to use the brand new ViewThatFits view.

Bottom sheet API in SwiftUI

Two years ago, I wrote a post about building a custom bottom sheet in SwiftUI. Nowadays, there is no need to make it manually, at least if you don’t need a super custom behavior. SwiftUI introduces a new API to display a bottom sheet in a few lines of code. This week we learn the new API allowing us to present bottom sheets in different appearances.

Mastering LabeledContent in SwiftUI

One of the new SwiftUI views released during WWDC22 was LabeledContent. And it became one of my favorite views that I try to use everywhere because it fits very well into Human Design Guidelines. This week we will learn how to use LabeledContent to provide a platform-oriented experience.