An easy-to-use SwiftUI package for splitting windows into multiple panes with pleasant animations out of the box.
One of the main UX draws of visionOS that sets it apart from anything we've ever seen before is its infinite canvas. Since windowed apps have the ability to be arbitrarily large, panes that would, on other platforms, have eaten into screen real estate can now simply expand the window's size.
Apple does this in the Messages app on visionOS. When the user taps on a contact photo within a chat, the contact details show up in a pane on the trailing edge of the main pane. It is a very good use of space, and is an easy way for developers to make apps feel more at home on visionOS.
Or at least, it would be easy if it weren't difficult to set up. Apple provides no easy way to set panes up. They are, in fact, just subdivisions of a single window, but all the setup is hard to do. Further, there is no way currently to programmatically change the size of windows in SwiftUI. To do this, one must drop into UIKit and do all the plumbing from there.
Vision Panes provides a simple SwiftUI interface to this functionality, with pleasant animations to boot.
- Easy-to-use SwiftUI API that should seem familiar to most SwiftUI creators
- Ability to add multiple panes to each of the four edges of a window
- No need to jump into UIKit
- Pleasant animations
- visionOS 1.0
- Swift 5.10
- Xcode 15.2
Install Vision Panes with SPM:
- In Xcode, open your project and navigate to File → Add Packages
- Paste the repository URL (https://github.com/reftonull/VisionPanes) and click Next.
- For Rules, select Up to Next Major Version.
- Click Add Package.
@main
struct MyApp: App {
var body: some Scene {
WindowGroup {
ContentView()
}
.windowStyle(.plain) // 1.
}
}
struct Item: Identifiable, Equatable { // 2.
var id: String
var text: String
}
struct ContentView: View {
@State var item: Item?
var body: some View {
VStack {
Button("Show Trailing Pane") {
item = Item(id: "1", text: "This is in the trailing pane")
}
Text("Main pane")
}
.frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
.pane(item: item, placement: .trailing) { item in // 3.
Text(item.text)
.frame(
maxWidth: .infinity,
maxHeight: .infinity
)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
}
}
}// 1 The windowStyle property on the WindowGroup must be set to .plain so that visionOS doesn’t show the glass background behind the whole window
// 2 Model for our pane, which must be Identifiable and Equatable
// 3 The pane view modifier looks very much like sheet, but doesn’t take in a binding. Pane content goes in the trailing closure. It’s that easy.
The pane view modifier looks like this:
.pane(
item: Item?,
placement: PanePlacement,
content: (Item) -> Content
)Item is your model, which must conform to Identifiable and Equatable. The pane is presented when item is non-nil, and is dismissed when item becomes nil.
PanePlacement is an enum which has the following cases:
.leading(width: CGFloat, spacing: CGFloat).trailin(width: CGFloat, spacing: CGFloat).top(width: CGFloat, spacing: CGFloat).bottom(width: CGFloat, spacing: CGFloat)
Sensible defaults are provided.
The content closure takes as input the non-nil version of item, allowing you to drive your UI from there.
All.Edges.mp4
Source Code
struct Item: Identifiable, Equatable {
var id: String
var text: String
}
struct AllEdges: View {
@State var item: Item?
@State var item2: Item?
@State var item3: Item?
@State var item4: Item?
var body: some View {
VStack {
Button("Show Leading Pane") {
if item == nil {
item = Item(id: "1", text: "Leading Pane")
} else {
item = nil
}
}
Button("Show Trailing Pane") {
if item2 == nil {
item2 = Item(id: "1", text: "Leading Pane")
} else {
item2 = nil
}
}
Button("Show Top Pane") {
if item3 == nil {
item3 = Item(id: "1", text: "Leading Pane")
} else {
item3 = nil
}
}
Button("Show Bottom Pane") {
if item4 == nil {
item4 = Item(id: "1", text: "Leading Pane")
} else {
item4 = nil
}
}
}
.frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
.pane(item: item, placement: .leading) { item in
Text(item.text)
.frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
}
.pane(item: item2, placement: .trailing) { item in
Text(item.text)
.frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
}
.pane(item: item3, placement: .top) { item in
Text(item.text)
.frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
}
.pane(item: item4, placement: .bottom) { item in
Text(item.text)
.frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
}
}
}SameEdge.mp4
Source Code
struct Item: Identifiable, Equatable {
var id: String
var text: String
}
struct SameEdge: View {
@State var item: Item?
@State var item2: Item?
var body: some View {
VStack {
Button("Show Pane 1") {
if item == nil {
item = Item(id: "1", text: "Pane 1")
} else {
item = nil
}
}
Button("Show Pane 2") {
if item2 == nil {
item2 = Item(id: "1", text: "Pane 2")
} else {
item2 = nil
}
}
}
.frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
.pane(item: item, placement: .trailing) { item in
Text(item.text)
.frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
}
.pane(item: item2, placement: .trailing) { item in
Text(item.text)
.frame(maxWidth: .infinity, maxHeight: .infinity)
.glassBackgroundEffect()
}
}
}The demo project can be found here. It includes both examples above, and will expand with more use cases in the future.
Issues and pull requests are welcome!
This package is built by Laksh Chakraborty.
A huge shoutout to Steve Troughton-Smith for his original example code that inspired this package. See his project here.
This package is available under an MIT License. See the license file here.