SwiftUI Patterns

Modern SwiftUI patterns targeting iOS 26+ with Swift 6.3. Covers architecture, state management, view composition, environment wiring, async loading, design polish, and platform/share integration. Navigation and layout patterns live in dedicated sibling skills. Patterns are backward-compatible to iOS 17 unless noted.

Contents

• Architecture: Model-View (MV) Pattern
• State Management
• View Ordering Convention
• View Composition
• Environment
• Async Data Loading
• iOS 26+ New APIs
• Performance Guidelines
• HIG Alignment
• Writing Tools (iOS 18+)
• Common Mistakes
• Review Checklist
• References

Scope boundary: This skill covers architecture, state ownership, composition, environment wiring, async loading, and related SwiftUI app structure patterns. Detailed navigation patterns are covered in the swiftui-navigation skill, including NavigationStack, NavigationSplitView, sheets, tabs, and deep-linking patterns. Detailed layout, container, and component patterns are covered in the swiftui-layout-components skill, including stacks, grids, lists, scroll view patterns, forms, controls, search UI with .searchable, overlays, and related layout components.

Architecture: Model-View (MV) Pattern

Default to MV -- views are lightweight state expressions; models and services own business logic. Do not introduce view models unless the existing code already uses them.

Core principles:

• Favor @State, @Environment, @Query, .task, and .onChange for orchestration
• Inject services and shared models via @Environment; keep views small and composable
• Split large views into smaller subviews rather than introducing a view model
• Test models, services, and business logic; keep views simple and declarative

struct FeedView: View {
    @Environment(FeedClient.self) private var client

    enum ViewState {
        case loading, error(String), loaded([Post])
    }

    @State private var viewState: ViewState = .loading

    var body: some View {
        List {
            switch viewState {
            case .loading:
                ProgressView()
            case .error(let message):
                ContentUnavailableView("Error", systemImage: "exclamationmark.triangle",
                                       description: Text(message))
            case .loaded(let posts):
                ForEach(posts) { post in
                    PostRow(post: post)
                }
            }
        }
        .task { await loadFeed() }
        .refreshable { await loadFeed() }
    }

    private func loadFeed() async {
        do {
            let posts = try await client.getFeed()
            viewState = .loaded(posts)
        } catch {
            viewState = .error(error.localizedDescription)
        }
    }
}

For MV pattern rationale, app wiring, and lightweight client examples, see references/architecture-patterns.md.

State Management

@Observable Ownership Rules

Important: Always annotate @Observable view model classes with @MainActor to ensure UI-bound state is updated on the main thread. Required for Swift 6 concurrency safety.

Ownership Pattern

// @Observable view model -- always @MainActor
@MainActor
@Observable final class ItemStore {
    var title = ""
    var items: [Item] = []
}

// View that OWNS the model
struct ParentView: View {
    @State var viewModel = ItemStore()

    var body: some View {
        ChildView(store: viewModel)
            .environment(viewModel)
    }
}

// View that READS (no wrapper needed for @Observable)
struct ChildView: View {
    let store: ItemStore

    var body: some View { Text(store.title) }
}

// View that BINDS (needs two-way access)
struct EditView: View {
    @Bindable var store: ItemStore

    var body: some View {
        TextField("Title", text: $store.title)
    }
}

// View that reads from ENVIRONMENT
struct DeepView: View {
    @Environment(ItemStore.self) var store

    var body: some View {
        @Bindable var s = store
        TextField("Title", text: $s.title)
    }
}

Granular tracking: SwiftUI only re-renders views that read properties that changed. If a view reads items but not isLoading, changing isLoading does not trigger a re-render. This is a major performance advantage over ObservableObject.

Legacy ObservableObject

Only use if supporting iOS 16 or earlier. @StateObject → @State, @ObservedObject → let, @EnvironmentObject → @Environment(Type.self).

View Ordering Convention

Order members top to bottom: 1) @Environment 2) let properties 3) @State / stored properties 4) computed var 5) init 6) body 7) view builders / helpers 8) async functions

View Composition

Extract Subviews

Break views into focused subviews. Each should have a single responsibility.

var body: some View {
    VStack {
        HeaderSection(title: title, isPinned: isPinned)
        DetailsSection(details: details)
        ActionsSection(onSave: onSave, onCancel: onCancel)
    }
}

Computed View Properties

Keep related subviews as computed properties in the same file; extract to a standalone View struct when reuse is intended or the subview carries its own state.

var body: some View {
    List {
        header
        filters
        results
    }
}

private var header: some View {
    VStack(alignment: .leading, spacing: 6) {
        Text(title).font(.title2)
        Text(subtitle).font(.<