How hard is it to build a native macOS app with SwiftUI?

Introduction

SwiftUI, Apple's powerful, declarative UI framework, has been creating ripples across the app development community since its introduction in 2019. As a powerful tool to build user interfaces across all Apple platforms, SwiftUI is rapidly reshaping the landscape of native macOS app development. But the question that keeps developers and business leaders on their toes is: How hard is it to build a native macOS app with SwiftUI?

This article will explore this question, shedding light on SwiftUI's capabilities, unique features, challenges, and overall impact on macOS app development.

Section 1: Understanding SwiftUI

SwiftUI is a declarative framework that lets developers write user interfaces with Swift, eliminating the complexities of dealing with Storyboards and Interface Builder. It allows for a simple, streamlined, and more readable codebase. SwiftUI also promotes consistency across platforms, enabling developers to reuse code and design for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. These advantages position SwiftUI as a potent tool for macOS app development.

Section 2: Building with SwiftUI: An Overview

At its core, building a native macOS app with SwiftUI is straightforward, given its simple syntax, intuitive interface design, and dynamic development environment. Developers can utilize SwiftUI's live preview feature to see real-time changes in their design as they modify their code. Moreover, SwiftUI's automatic support for features like Dark Mode, Accessibility, and Localization further eases the development process.

Section 3: The Ease of Learning SwiftUI

For developers already familiar with Swift, learning SwiftUI presents a relatively mild learning curve. Concepts like data flow, state management, and the declarative programming paradigm might need some getting used to, especially for those with an imperative programming background. However, Apple's comprehensive resources, tutorials, and community support can significantly facilitate this transition.

Section 4: Challenges in Building a Native macOS App with SwiftUI

Despite its merits, SwiftUI also brings along certain challenges. Being relatively new, it lacks the maturity of older frameworks like UIKit and AppKit, which means it may lack certain features. Additionally, debugging can be tricky, with error messages often being vague. Moreover, because SwiftUI is only compatible with macOS Catalina and later versions, applications built with SwiftUI will not support earlier versions of macOS.

Section 5: Best Practices for Building macOS Apps with SwiftUI

To efficiently build a macOS app with SwiftUI, developers can follow certain best practices. Proper structuring of views and components, embracing SwiftUI's reactive nature, and mastering the use of @State and @Binding can lead to cleaner, more efficient code. Testing, refactoring, and continuous learning should also be integral parts of a developer's journey with SwiftUI.

Do we use SwiftUI?

In conclusion, building a native macOS app with SwiftUI may present some challenges but it's far from insurmountable. The learning curve is relatively smooth for Swift-savvy developers, and the benefits outweigh the potential drawbacks for most use cases. As SwiftUI continues to evolve, the process will likely become even easier and more robust, making SwiftUI a sound investment for the future of macOS app development.

Enter WebRemarks

We've built WebRemarks for macOS in less than 4 months, absolutely from scratch and trying to keep the number of dependencies to a minimum. We've used SwiftUI for the UI and Combine for the networking layer. We've also used a few open-source libraries for the Markdown parsing and syntax highlighting. In our opinionated view, SwiftUI is the future of macOS development and we're excited to see how it evolves in the future.