Basic form design

Paul Hudson @twostraws September 18th 2019

Fully updated for Xcode 11.4

SwiftUI’s forms work as containers, just like HStack and VStack, which means you can add other views inside it as needed. However, they automatically adapt the behavior and styling of some controls so they fit better in the form environment.

For example, this creates a form with a toggle, a segmented control, and a button:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var enableLogging = false

    @State private var selectedColor = 0
    @State private var colors = ["Red", "Green", "Blue"]

    var body: some View {
        NavigationView {
            Form {
                Picker(selection: $selectedColor, label: Text("Select a color")) {
                    ForEach(0 ..< colors.count) {
                        Text(self.colors[$0]).tag($0)
                    }
                }.pickerStyle(SegmentedPickerStyle())

                Toggle(isOn: $enableLogging) {
                    Text("Enable Logging")
                }

                Button(action: {
                // activate theme!
                }) {
                    Text("Save changes")
                }
            }.navigationBarTitle("Settings")
        }
    }
}

When that code is run you’ll see two things that are fundamental to the behavior of forms:

On iOS the form automatically adopts the style of a grouped list, so users see a scrolling selection of options.
The button has adapted itself to look like an actionable list row – it’s left-aligned and in blue.

You can have as many rows in your form as you need, but remember to use groups if you need more than 10.