How to customize swipe edit buttons in a UITableView

Swift version: 5.6

Paul Hudson @twostraws May 28th 2019

As of iOS 8.0 there's an easy way to customize the list of buttons that appear when the user swipes from right to left: editActionsForRowAt. Return an array of UITableViewRowAction objects that have titles and styles (and also background colors if you want to customize their appearance), and iOS does the rest.

When you create a UITableViewRowAction object you give it a trailing closure describing what should happen when the user taps the button. You'll get reminded of what action triggered the code, and you'll also be given the index path of the row where the user was tapping. For example, you might do this:

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, editActionsForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> [UITableViewRowAction]? {
    let delete = UITableViewRowAction(style: .destructive, title: "Delete") { (action, indexPath) in
        // delete item at indexPath
    }

    let share = UITableViewRowAction(style: .normal, title: "Disable") { (action, indexPath) in
        // share item at indexPath
    }

    share.backgroundColor = UIColor.blue

    return [delete, share]
}

Note that the first button uses a .destructive style so it will be colored red by default, but the second button specifically has a blue color assigned to it.

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Available from iOS 8.0