Custom back button for NavigationView's navigation bar in SwiftUI

Question

TL;DR

Use this to transition to your view:

NavigationLink(destination: SampleDetails()) {}

Add this to the view itself:

@Environment(\.presentationMode) var presentationMode: Binding<PresentationMode>

Then, in a button action or something, dismiss the view:

presentationMode.wrappedValue.dismiss()

---

Full code

From a parent, navigate using NavigationLink

 NavigationLink(destination: SampleDetails()) {}

In DetailsView hide navigationBarBackButton and set custom back button to leading navigationBarItem,

struct SampleDetails: View {
    @Environment(\.presentationMode) var presentationMode: Binding<PresentationMode>

    var btnBack : some View { Button(action: {
        self.presentationMode.wrappedValue.dismiss()
        }) {
            HStack {
            Image("ic_back") // set image here
                .aspectRatio(contentMode: .fit)
                .foregroundColor(.white)
                Text("Go back")
            }
        }
    }
    
    var body: some View {
            List {
                Text("sample code")
        }
        .navigationBarBackButtonHidden(true)
        .navigationBarItems(leading: btnBack)
    }
}

SwiftUI 1.0

It looks like you can now combine the navigationBarBackButtonHidden and .navigationBarItems to get the effect you're trying to achieve.

Code

struct Navigation_CustomBackButton_Detail: View {
    @Environment(\.presentationMode) var presentationMode
    
    var body: some View {
        ZStack {
            Color("Theme3BackgroundColor")
            VStack(spacing: 25) {
                Image(systemName: "globe").font(.largeTitle)
                Text("NavigationView").font(.largeTitle)
                Text("Custom Back Button").foregroundColor(.gray)
                HStack {
                    Image("NavBarBackButtonHidden")
                    Image(systemName: "plus")
                    Image("NavBarItems")
                }
                Text("Hide the system back button and then use the navigation bar items modifier to add your own.")
                    .frame(maxWidth: .infinity)
                    .padding()
                    .background(Color("Theme3ForegroundColor"))
                    .foregroundColor(Color("Theme3BackgroundColor"))
                
                Spacer()
            }
            .font(.title)
            .padding(.top, 50)
        }
        .navigationBarTitle(Text("Detail View"), displayMode: .inline)
        .edgesIgnoringSafeArea(.bottom)
        // Hide the system back button
        .navigationBarBackButtonHidden(true)
        // Add your custom back button here
        .navigationBarItems(leading:
            Button(action: {
                self.presentationMode.wrappedValue.dismiss()
            }) {
                HStack {
                    Image(systemName: "arrow.left.circle")
                    Text("Go Back")
                }
        })
    }
}

Example

Here is what it looks like (excerpt from the "SwiftUI Views" book):

Based on other answers here, this is a simplified answer for Option 2 working for me in XCode 11.0:

struct DetailView: View {
    @Environment(\.presentationMode) var presentationMode: Binding<PresentationMode>

    var body: some View {

        Button(action: {
           self.presentationMode.wrappedValue.dismiss()
        }) {
            Image(systemName: "gobackward").padding()
        }
        .navigationBarHidden(true)

    }
}

Note: To get the NavigationBar to be hidden, I also needed to set and then hide the NavigationBar in ContentView.

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        NavigationView {
            VStack {
                NavigationLink(destination: DetailView()) {
                    Text("Link").padding()
                }
            } // Main VStack
            .navigationBarTitle("Home")
            .navigationBarHidden(true)

        } //NavigationView
    }
}

I expect you want to use custom back button in all navigable screens, so I wrote custom wrapper based on @Ashish answer.

struct NavigationItemContainer<Content>: View where Content: View {
    private let content: () -> Content
    @Environment(\.presentationMode) var presentationMode

    private var btnBack : some View { Button(action: {
        self.presentationMode.wrappedValue.dismiss()
    }) {
        HStack {
            Image("back_icon") // set image here
                .aspectRatio(contentMode: .fit)
                .foregroundColor(.black)
            Text("Go back")
        }
        }
    }

    var body: some View {
        content()
            .navigationBarBackButtonHidden(true)
            .navigationBarItems(leading: btnBack)
    }

    init(@ViewBuilder content: @escaping () -> Content) {
        self.content = content
    }
}

Wrap screen content in NavigationItemContainer:

Usage:

struct CreateAccountScreenView: View {
    var body: some View {
        NavigationItemContainer {
            VStack(spacing: 21) {
                AppLogoView()
                //...
            }
        }
    }
}

Swiping is not disabled this way.

Works for me. XCode 11.3.1

Put this in your root View

init() {
    UINavigationBar.appearance().isUserInteractionEnabled = false
    UINavigationBar.appearance().backgroundColor = .clear
    UINavigationBar.appearance().barTintColor = .clear
    UINavigationBar.appearance().setBackgroundImage(UIImage(), for: .default)
    UINavigationBar.appearance().shadowImage = UIImage()
    UINavigationBar.appearance().tintColor = .clear
}

And this in your child View

@Environment(\.presentationMode) var presentationMode: Binding<PresentationMode>

Button(action: {self.presentationMode.wrappedValue.dismiss()}) {
    Image(systemName: "gobackward")
}

You can use UIAppearance for this:

if let image = UIImage(named: "back-button") {
    UINavigationBar.appearance().backIndicatorImage = image
    UINavigationBar.appearance().backIndicatorTransitionMaskImage = image
}

This should be added early on in your app like App.init. This also preserves the native swipe back functionality.

All of the solutions I see here seem to disable swipe to go back functionality to navigate to the previous page, so sharing a solution I found that maintains that functionality. You can make an extension of your root view and override your navigation style and call the function in the view initializer.

Sample View

struct SampleRootView: View {

    init() {
        overrideNavigationAppearance()
    }

    var body: some View {
        Text("Hello, World!")
    }
}

Extension

extension SampleRootView {
   func overrideNavigationAppearance() {
        let navigationBarAppearance = UINavigationBarAppearance()
        let barAppearace = UINavigationBar.appearance()
        barAppearace.tintColor = *desired UIColor for icon*
        barAppearace.barTintColor = *desired UIColor for icon*

        navigationBarAppearance.setBackIndicatorImage(*desired UIImage for custom icon*, transitionMaskImage: *desired UIImage for custom icon*)

        UINavigationBar.appearance().standardAppearance = navigationBarAppearance
        UINavigationBar.appearance().compactAppearance = navigationBarAppearance
        UINavigationBar.appearance().scrollEdgeAppearance = navigationBarAppearance
   }
}

The only downfall to this approach is I haven't found a way to remove/change the text associated with the custom back button.