What’s the difference between Any and AnyObject?
Swift version: 5.6
Swift has two anonymous types: Any and AnyObject. They are subtly different, and you will need to use both sooner or later.
AnyObject refers to any instance of a class, and is equivalent to id in Objective-C. It’s useful when you specifically want to work with a reference type, because it won’t allow any of Swift’s structs or enums to be used. AnyObject is also used when you want to restrict a protocol so that it can be used only with classes.
Any refers to any instance of a class, struct, or enum – literally anything at all. You’ll see this in Swift wherever types are unknown or are mixed in ways that can be meaningfully categorized:
let values: [Any] = [1, 2, "Fish"]Ideally you should avoid both Any and AnyObject in your code – it’s better to be more specific if you can be.
SAVE 50% To celebrate WWDC22, all our books and bundles are half price, so you can take your Swift knowledge further without spending big! Get the Swift Power Pack to build your iOS career faster, get the Swift Platform Pack to builds apps for macOS, watchOS, and beyond, or get the Swift Plus Pack to learn advanced design patterns, testing skills, and more.
Sponsor Hacking with Swift and reach the world's largest Swift community!
Available from iOS 8.0 – learn more in my book Swift Design Patterns
Similar solutions…
- SwiftUI tips and tricks
- All SwiftUI property wrappers explained and compared
- How to create live playgrounds in Xcode
- How to create a random terrain tile map using SKTileMapNode and GKPerlinNoiseSource
- How to use Instruments to profile your SwiftUI code and identify slow layouts
About the Swift Knowledge Base
This is part of the Swift Knowledge Base, a free, searchable collection of solutions for common iOS questions.
