Include SwiftUI views in existing UIKit application

Question

edit 05/06/19: Added information about UIHostingController as suggested by @Departamento B in his answer. Credits go to him!

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Using SwiftUI within UIKit

One can use SwiftUI components in existing UIKit environments by wrapping a SwiftUI View into a UIHostingController like this:

let swiftUIView = SomeSwiftUIView() // swiftUIView is View
let viewCtrl = UIHostingController(rootView: swiftUIView)

It's also possible to override UIHostingController and customize it to one's needs, e. g. by setting the preferredStatusBarStyle manually if it doesn't work via SwiftUI as expected.

UIHostingController is documented here.

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Using UIKit within SwiftUI

If an existing UIKit view should be used in a SwiftUI environment, the UIViewRepresentable protocol is there to help! It is documented here and can be seen in action in this official Apple tutorial.

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Compatibility

Please note that you cannot use SwiftUI on iOS versions < iOS 13, as SwiftUI is only available on iOS 13 and above. See this post for more information.

If you want to use SwiftUI in a project with a target below iOS 13, you need to tag your SwiftUI structs with @available(iOS 13.0.0, *) attribute.

If you want to embed SwiftUI into a UIKit view controller, use a Container View.

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    @IBOutlet weak var theContainer: UIView!

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        let childView = UIHostingController(rootView: SwiftUIView())
        addChild(childView)
        childView.view.frame = theContainer.bounds
        theContainer.addSubview(childView.view)
        childView.didMove(toParent: self)
    }
}

Reference

UIHostingController

Although at the moment the documentation for the class has not been written, UIHostingController<Content> seems to be what you're looking for: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/uihostingcontroller

I've just tried it in my app with the following line of code:

let vc = UIHostingController(rootView: BenefitsSwiftUIView())

Where BenefitsSwiftUIView is just the default "Hello World" View from SwiftUI. This works exactly as you expect it. It also works if you subclass UIHostingController.

One item I have not seen mentioned yet, and involves Xcode 11 beta 5 (11M382q) involves updating your app's info.plist file.

For my scenario, I am taking an existing Swift & UIKit based application and fully migrating it to be an iOS 13 & pure SwiftUI app, so backwards compatibility is not a concern for me.

After making the necessary changes to AppDelegate:

// MARK: UISceneSession Lifecycle
func application(_ application: UIApplication,
                 configurationForConnecting connectingSceneSession: UISceneSession,
                 options: UIScene.ConnectionOptions) -> UISceneConfiguration {
    return UISceneConfiguration(name: "Default Configuration",
                                sessionRole: connectingSceneSession.role)
}

And adding in a SceneDelegate class:

import UIKit
import SwiftUI

class SceneDelegate: UIResponder, UIWindowSceneDelegate {

    var window: UIWindow?

    func scene(_ scene: UIScene, willConnectTo session: UISceneSession, options connectionOptions: UIScene.ConnectionOptions) {
        if let windowScene = scene as? UIWindowScene {
            let window = UIWindow(windowScene: windowScene)
            window.rootViewController = UIHostingController(rootView: HomeList())
            self.window = window
            window.makeKeyAndVisible()
        }
    }
}

I was encountering a problem where my SceneDelegate was not being called. This was fixed by adding the following into my info.plist file:

<key>UIApplicationSceneManifest</key>
<dict>
    <key>UIApplicationSupportsMultipleScenes</key>
    <false/>
    <key>UISceneConfigurations</key>
    <dict>
        <key>UIWindowSceneSessionRoleApplication</key>
        <array>
            <dict>
                <key>UISceneClassName</key>
                <string></string>
                <key>UISceneDelegateClassName</key>
                <string>$(PRODUCT_MODULE_NAME).SceneDelegate</string>
                <key>UISceneConfigurationName</key>
                <string>Default Configuration</string>
                <key>UISceneStoryboardFile</key>
                <string>LaunchScreen</string>
            </dict>
        </array>
    </dict>
</dict>

And a screenshot to see:

The main items to keep in sync are:

• Delegate Class Name so that Xcode knows where to find your SceneDelegate file
• Configuration Name so that the call in AppDelegate can load the correct UISceneConfiguration

After doing this, I was then able to load my newly created HomeList view (A SwiftUI object)

If you're looking to create a SwiftUI view from a legacy Objective C project, then this technique worked perfectly for me,

See Adding SwiftUI to Objective-C Apps

Kudos to our friend who wrote that up.