Topic

Apps

A collection of 13 issues

NSAttributedString and AttributedString Bridging Performance on macOS

With the introduction of the Swift-native AttributedString in iOS 15 and macOS 12, it’s become pretty common to convert between the existing NSAttributedString and the new type. Certain first-party frameworks, like SwiftUI and App Intents, require developers to use the new AttributedString. In existing apps, simply moving off of

Conditional SwiftUI View Modifiers are Evil

Custom modifiers in SwiftUI are a great way to reuse code. However, that should never lead to obfuscating semantics. And, unfortunately, most use cases for conditional modifiers do both of those things. Here's why.

Overuse and Misuse of Spacers in SwiftUI Code

When it comes to writing good user interface code, and code in general, it’s not exactly groundbreaking to claim that in any given situation, we should strive to use the right tool for the right job. When working with tools and frameworks that are designed to seem simple on

Closures in SwiftUI Environment are Killing Your App’s Performance

SwiftUI undoubtedly has a lot of impressive capabilities and features, but unfortunately transparency is not one of them. Many components are designed and built as black boxes, with developers left attempting to piece together the full picture using the sparse information gathered from the documentation, WWDC videos, and reverse engineering.

Document-based SwiftUI Apps on visionOS 2.4 are Unusable due to a Regression

TL;DR: As a result of a gnarly regression, every document-based SwiftUI app on visionOS 2.4 is duplicating views, rendering document-based app completely unusable on the platform. I was working on porting one of my side project apps from macOS to visionOS, and at some point wanted to test

Adding Subtitles macOS Menu Items using SwiftUI

At this point, AppKit developers with their finger on the pulse may be familiar with setting subtitles on NSMenuItem using the subtitle property, which has been available since macOS 14.4. In fact, I was the one who added it back when I worked at Apple. Achieving the same in

Building a Universal Mini vMac Application

This project demonstrates a collection of techniques for consolidating various Mini vMac variations into one application, enabling better code reuse and simplifying maintenance.

Mysterious Runtime Crashes in Swift 6 Language Mode

Swift 6 language mode promises compile-time stricter concurrency checking, aimed at preventing and eliminating data races, runtime memory corruption, as well as other common but hard to debug issues. While adopting the new language mode can be a bit of a challenge for larger or less modular projects, Swift 6

SwiftUI's handling of the Mac menu bar is still pretty bad

While trying out a few things around the SwiftUI document handling and lifecycle in a macOS application, I came across a pretty bad issue. Not only did it not do as the API promised, it actually messed with the menu in ways that would be unrecoverable to a SwiftUI lifecycle

SwiftUI's New Geometry Modifiers & Best Practices: onGeometryChange, onScrollGeometryChange, and More

SwiftUI has recently introduced a family of geometry observation APIs: onGeometryChange, onScrollGeometryChange, and onScrollPhaseChange. The former is back deployed all the way back to iOS 16 and macOS 13 Ventura. These new modifiers are a pretty big deal in a few ways.