Enabling and disabling elements in forms >

Pickers in forms

Paul Hudson @twostraws December 27th 2022

Updated for Xcode 14.2

Updated in iOS 15

SwiftUI’s picker views take on special behavior when inside forms, automatically adapting based on the platform you’re using them with. On iOS, the picker will be collapsed down to a single list row that presents all the available options as a popup menu.

For example, this creates a form with a picker using an array for its items:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var selectedStrength = "Mild"
    let strengths = ["Mild", "Medium", "Mature"]

    var body: some View {
        NavigationStack {
            Form {
                Section {
                    Picker("Strength", selection: $selectedStrength) {
                        ForEach(strengths, id: \.self) {
                            Text($0)
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Download this as an Xcode project

On iOS, that will appear as a single list row that you can tap to display all possible options – Mild, Medium, and Mature.

If you want to disable this behavior, you can force the picker to adopt its regular style by using the .pickerStyle(.wheel) modifier, like this:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var selectedStrength = "Mild"
    let strengths = ["Mild", "Medium", "Mature"]

    var body: some View {
        NavigationStack {
            Form {
                Section {
                    Picker("Strength", selection: $selectedStrength) {
                        ForEach(strengths, id: \.self) {
                            Text($0)
                        }
                    }
                    .pickerStyle(.wheel)
                }
            }
            .navigationTitle("Select your cheese")
        }
    }
}

A wheel style picker offering choices Mild, Medium, and Mature.