Topic

Swift

A collection of 9 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

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

The Curious Case of NSPanel's Nonactivating Style Mask Flag

While working on a behavior that required dynamically switching between the nonactivating panel behavior and one that is more similar to the regular window behavior, I discovered a subtle but significant issue in AppKit: changing the NSWindowStyleMaskNonactivatingPanel flag after an NSPanel has been initialized doesn't fully update the

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

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 FocusedValue, macOS Menus, and the Responder Chain

On macOS, you can use the SwiftUI FocusedValue API to achieve a behavior similar to that of the Responder Chain, including autoenabling menu items.

Vibrancy, NSAppearance, and Visual Effects in Modern AppKit and SwiftUI Apps

When working with NSVisualEffectView and vibrancy on macOS, it is somewhat common to find yourself in a situation where UI elements are not being rendered as you’d expect them to. Here are the possible problems the addition of vibrancy can cause, reasons behind them, and the tools at our disposal.

Personal Website Tidbits

I'm going to share the open-source packages that I've used while putting together my new personal website (philz.work). I’ve been really impressed with the results I’ve been able to achieve in a short amount of time and with a relatively low amount of effort (because, you know, day job and all).