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How to create a tappable button

Paul Hudson @twostraws September 3rd 2021

Updated for Xcode 14.0 beta 1

Updated in iOS 15

SwiftUI’s button is similar to UIButton, except it’s more flexible in terms of what content it shows and it uses a closure for its action rather than the old target/action system.

To create a button with a string title you would start with code like this:

Button("Button title") {
    print("Button tapped!")
}

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For example, you might make a button that shows or hides some detail text when it’s tapped:

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

    var body: some View {
        VStack(alignment: .leading) {
            Button("Show details") {
                showDetails.toggle()
            }

            if showDetails {
                Text("You should follow me on Twitter: @twostraws")
                    .font(.largeTitle)
            }
        }
    }
}

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Tip: The classic thing to do when you’re learning a framework is to scatter print() calls around so you can see when things happen. If you want to try that with your button action, you should first right-click on the play button in the preview canvas and choose “Debug Preview” so that your print() calls work.

The title inside the button can be any kind of view, so you can create an image button like this:

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

    var body: some View {
        Button {
            print("Image tapped!")
        } label: {
            Image("sunset")
        }
    }
}

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Using a custom label is really helpful for times you want to increase the tappable area of a button, because you can apply padding to the label then use contentShape(Rectangle()) or similar to make the whole area tappable.

For example, this adds 20 points of padding to a button’s label, to ensure it’s tappable in a much larger space than would otherwise be possible:

Button {
    print("Button pressed")
} label: {
    Text("Press Me")
        .padding(20)
}
.contentShape(Rectangle())

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If you’re targeting iOS 15 or later, you can also attach a role to your button that helps SwiftUI know what kind of styling should be attached to the button. For example, if we had a Delete button we might mark it with the .destructive role so SwiftUI can highlight it in red when it makes sense:

Button("Delete", role: .destructive) {
    print("Perform delete")
}

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There’s also a .cancel role, and again it gives SwiftUI that extra bit of context to present it appropriately.

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How to create a tappable button

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