While in today’s edition of Power On, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman mentioned a quiet but meaningful upgrade coming to Apple’s SwiftUI framework, 9to5Mac has learned of a second welcome improvement for developers who have been eager but unable to go all-in on SwiftUI app development.
For years, SwiftUI has been marketed as the future of Apple app development: a modern way to build user interfaces that works across all Apple platforms.
And for the most part, it does the job. Until you need to do something incredibly advanced like… support bold or italic text input, or embed web views.
Finally, a built-in rich text editor
Rich text has been one of SwiftUI’s biggest blind spots. It has had display-side rich text for a while, but nothing for input.
And since there’s no built-in component specifically for that, developers have had to jump through hoops, mixing their code with good old UIKit, using third-party libraries, or hacking together awkward workarounds that break SwiftUI’s clean, platform-native feel.
However, according to Gurman, this may be about to change:
“And, in a development that will certainly appease many developers, SwiftUI, a set of Apple frameworks and tools for creating app user interfaces, will finally get a built-in rich text editor.”
With a native rich text editor support reportedly on the way, Apple might finally be closing one of the most frustrating gaps in the framework. It’s a small change that might unlock a lot: better input fields for notes, messaging apps, documents, all without having to abandon SwiftUI’s declarative flow.
Finally, web view embedding
Adding to today’s report, 9to5Mac has also learned that Apple is preparing a new native API that will finally let developers embed web views in SwiftUI.
Like with rich text support, this means developers won’t have to keep resorting to hacks or bridging UIKit code just to display a webpage. You can check the new code by yourself on WebKit’s GitHub page.
These kinds of friction points are exactly what’s kept many developers from fully embracing SwiftUI. And while today’s news checks off just two long-standing items on their long wish lists, it might be enough to bring a few more of them onboard, which means better app experiences across the board for the rest of us.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments