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How to use images and other views as a backgrounds

Paul Hudson @twostraws October 12th 2019

Fully updated for Xcode 11.4

Rather than specifying a background color, you can specify a background image using the same background() modifier.

For example, this creates a text view with a large font, then places a 100x100 image behind it:

Text("Hacking with Swift")
    .font(.largeTitle)
    .background(
        Image("example-image")
            .resizable()
            .frame(width: 100, height: 100))

However, in SwiftUI it doesn’t need to be an image – you can actually use any kind of view for your background. For example, this creates the same text view then places a 200x200 red circle behind it:

Text("Hacking with Swift")
    .font(.largeTitle)
    .background(Circle()
        .fill(Color.red)
        .frame(width: 200, height: 200))

By default background views automatically take up as much space as they need to be fully visible, but if you want you can have them be clipped to the size of their parent view using the clipped() modifier:

Text("Hacking with Swift")
    .font(.largeTitle)
    .background(Circle()
        .fill(Color.red)
        .frame(width: 200, height: 200))
        .clipped()

To be clear, you can use any view as your background – another text view if you wanted, for example.