Insert, update and delete animations with ForEach in SwiftUI

Question

I managed to have a nice insert and delete animation for items displayed in a ForEach (done via .transition(...) on Row). But sadly this animation is also triggered when I just update the name of Item in the observed array. Of course this is because it actually is a new view (you can see that, since onAppear() of Row is called).

As we all know the recommended way of managing lists with cool animations would be List but I think that many people would like to avoid the standard UI or the limitations that come along with this element.

A working SwiftUI example snippet is attached (Build with Xcode 11.4)

So, the question:

Is there a smart way to suppress the animation (or have another one) for just updated items that would keep the same position? Is there a cool possibility to "reuse" the row and just update it?

Or is the answer "Let's wait for the next WWDC and let's see if Apple will fix it..."? ;-)

Cheers,
Orlando 🍻

---

Edit

bonky fronks answer is actually a good approach when you can distinguish between edit/add/delete (e.g. by manual user actions). As soon as the items array gets updated in background (for example by synced updates coming from Core Data in your view model) you don't know if this is an update or not. But maybe in this case the answer would be to manually implement the insert/update/delete cases in the view model.

---

struct ContentView: View {

    @State var items: [Item] = [
        Item(name: "Tim"),
        Item(name: "Steve"),
        Item(name: "Bill")
    ]

    var body: some View {
        NavigationView {
            ScrollView {
                VStack {
                    ForEach(items, id: \.self) { item in
                        Row(name: item.name)
                    }
                }
            }
            .navigationBarItems(leading: AddButton, trailing: RenameButton)
        }
    }

    private var AddButton: some View {
        Button(action: {
            self.items.insert(Item(name: "Jeff"), at: 0)
        }) {
            Text("Add")
        }
    }

    private var RenameButton: some View {
        Button(action: {
            self.items[0].name = "Craigh"
        }) {
            Text("Rename first")
        }
    }
}

struct Row: View {

    @State var name: String

    var body: some View {
        HStack {
            Text(name)
            Spacer()
        }
        .padding()
        .animation(.spring())
        .transition(.move(edge: .leading))
    }
}

struct Item: Identifiable, Hashable {

    let id: UUID
    var name: String

    init(id: UUID = UUID(), name: String) {
        self.id = id
        self.name = name
    }
}

struct ContentView_Previews: PreviewProvider {
    static var previews: some View {
        ContentView()
    }
}

Answer 1

Luckily this is actually really easy to do. Simply remove .animation(.spring()) on your Row, and wrap any changes in withAnimation(.spring()) { ... }.

So the add button will look like this:

private var AddButton: some View {
    Button(action: {
        withAnimation(.spring()) {
            self.items.insert(Item(name: "Jeff"), at: 0)
        }
    }) {
        Text("Add")
    }
}

and your Row will look like this:

struct Row: View {

    @State var name: String

    var body: some View {
        HStack {
            Text(name)
            Spacer()
        }
        .padding()
        .transition(.move(edge: .leading))
    }
}