How to Learn SwiftUI to Develop Mac Apps

A common complaint I hear online from Mac developers is that all the SwiftUI learning material focuses on iOS development, and there’s nothing on Mac development. This article provides advice on learning SwiftUI for Mac development.

A lot of iOS SwiftUI learning material also works on Mac

Mac developers have to accept the fact that iOS development is much more popular than Mac development. People creating SwiftUI tutorials, videos, and courses are going to focus on iOS developers.

The good news with SwiftUI is that most of the iOS learning material also applies to Mac development. Apple created SwiftUI so developers can create user interfaces for all of their platforms with one framework. If you find a SwiftUI tutorial or course that you like, such as Hacking with Swift’s 100 Days of SwiftUI course, you can use the tutorial or course to make Mac apps. You may have to make some changes to get things to work on Mac.

Lists are one area of SwiftUI where there are large differences between iOS and Mac. If you read an article about lists and try to use the code in a Mac app, you’ll run into problems. The following articles cover those differences:

• Working with Lists in Multiplatform SwiftUI Apps
• Removing Items from SwiftUI Lists in Mac Apps
• Moving List Items Using Drag and Drop in SwiftUI Mac Apps

You can use AppKit views in SwiftUI Mac apps

SwiftUI is not a finished framework, especially on Mac. Some views that Mac apps need do not have native SwiftUI equivalents, and some of SwiftUI’s views do not work well on Mac. A workaround for SwiftUI’s Mac limitations is to use AppKit views in your app.

To use an AppKit view in a SwiftUI Mac app, create a struct that conforms to the NSViewRepresentable protocol. My Using a UIKit or AppKIt View in SwiftUI article provides more details on using AppKit views in a SwiftUI app.

SwiftUI resources for Mac development

To address complaints about a lack of learning material on Mac development, I compiled a list of Mac development resources. Many of those resources cover using SwiftUI for Mac development.

This site has a number of SwiftUI articles, most of which apply to Mac development. You can see a complete list of articles on the Articles page.