How to create a segmented control and read values from it

Paul Hudson @twostraws December 1st 2022

Updated for Xcode 14.2

Updated for iOS 15

SwiftUI’s Picker can also be used to create segmented controls equivalent to UISegmentedControl from UIKit, although it needs to be bound to some state and you must ensure to give each segment a tag so it can be identified. Segments can be text or pictures; anything else will silently fail.

As an example, this creates a segmented control that works with a favoriteColor state property, and adds a text view below that shows whichever value was selected:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var favoriteColor = 0

    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            Picker("What is your favorite color?", selection: $favoriteColor) {
                Text("Red").tag(0)
                Text("Green").tag(1)
                Text("Blue").tag(2)
            }
            .pickerStyle(.segmented)

            Text("Value: \(favoriteColor)")
        }
    }
}

Download this as an Xcode project

A grey capsule containing the choices Red, Green, and Blue, with Red selected. Below are the words “Value: 0”.

Important: If you’re using Xcode 12 you need to use SegmentedPickerStyle() rather than .segmented.

In this instance, though, it’s better to create an array to store the various colors, then use ForEach to create the text view inside using a loop:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var favoriteColor = "Red"
    var colors = ["Red", "Green", "Blue"]

    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            Picker("What is your favorite color?", selection: $favoriteColor) {
                ForEach(colors, id: \.self) {
                    Text($0)
                }
            }
            .pickerStyle(.segmented)

            Text("Value: \(favoriteColor)")
        }
    }
}

Download this as an Xcode project

A grey capsule containing the choices Red, Green, and Blue, with Blue selected. Below are the words “Value: Blue”.