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Although the SwiftUI changes this year are a little smaller than we're used to, this year's SwiftUI update resolves a handful of common complaints folks hit when building – things that would pretty much always require us to drop down to UIKit can now be done natively, which is great.

This year the two biggest changes are:

But in talking to developers, it's been interesting to see how smaller features are often more popular, usually because they finally resolve long-standing annoyances with SwiftUI:

Once again we got a fantastic update from SF Symbols – the new draw on animations are thoroughly beautiul, particularly when used with things like checkboxes.

And there's also a bundle of updates specifically aimed at Apple's new liquid glass user interface, including:

The real work is down to developers who want to get a great liquid glass experience while also retaining compatibility with iOS 18 and earlier. My advice is not to rush: wait until at least beta 4 or perhaps even 5 before you start moving code across, so you have time to let the API settle a little and also to get used to how the effects look and feel.

What's still missing?

Every year folks including me ask the same question: what is still missing from SwiftUI after this year's update? Every year the list gets shorter, but there are still a few outstanding problems:

  • Importing images from the camera
  • Scanning QR codes and bar codes
  • Cache control for AsyncImageView
  • Making @AppStorage sync with iCloud
  • Detecting shake gestures
  • Reading and writing data with the keychain

It's also frustrating to see Apple ship all-new API without SwiftUI wrappers, with PaperKit being this year's primary offender.

As for SwiftData… well, it's not great news, let's put it that way.

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