Previous to iOS 16, if it’s essential show a photograph picker for customers to decide on images from Picture library, you need to depend on PHPickerViewController
or the older UIImagePickerController
of UIKit. It’s not troublesome to make use of it as you’ll be able to combine UIKit elements with UIViewControllerRepresentable
. That mentioned, it could be nice if the SwiftUI framework comes with a local view for picture picker.
In iOS 16, Apple lastly brings PhotosPicker to SwiftUI that it has the identical functionalities as its UIKit counterpart. In case your app will solely help gadget working iOS 16 or up, you should utilize this new view for dealing with picture picks.
Let’s see the way it works with some pattern code. Please observe that it’s essential use Xcode 14 beta 4 to comply with this tutorial.
Utilizing PhotosPicker in SwiftUI
The PhotosPicker
view is bundled within the PhotosUI
framework. Earlier than utilizing it, you need to first import the framework:
Subsequent, we declare a state variable to carry the chosen picture:
@State non-public var selectedItem: PhotosPickerItem? |
It’s fairly simple to convey up the images picker. Right here is the fundamental utilization of PhotosPicker
:
PhotosPicker(choice: $selectedItem, matching: .photos)) { Label(“Choose a photograph”, systemImage: “picture”) } .tint(.purple) .controlSize(.giant) .buttonStyle(.borderedProminent) |
You instantiate PhotosPicker
by passing it a binding to the chosen merchandise and a photograph filter. Within the closure, you describe the looks of the button. With just a few strains of code, Xcode ought to present you a button within the preview.

In the event you click on the button, it shows a Photographs picker for selecting photos from the picture library. While you select a photograph, the picture picker robotically dismisses and the chosen picture merchandise is saved within the selectedItem
variable.

Filtering the Photographs
The matching
parameter enables you to specify the picture filter to use to the picture library. Within the code above, we set its worth to .photos
to point out photos solely. If you wish to show each photos and movies, set the worth of the parameter to the next:
.any(of: [.images, .videos]) |
The .photos
filter consists of all photos within the person’s picture library. What if you wish to exclude dwell images from the picture set? You may set the worth like this:
.any(of: [.images, .not(.livePhotos)]) |
You employ the .not
filter to exclude Stay Photographs.
Dealing with the Picture Choice
As talked about earlier, the chosen picture is robotically saved within the selectedItem
variable, which has a sort of PhotoPickerItem
. So, how can we load the picture and show it on display?
First, we connect the onChange
modifier to hearken to the replace of the selectedItem
variable. Each time there’s a change, we name the loadTransferable
technique to load the asset knowledge.
.onChange(of: selectedItem) { newItem in Activity { if let knowledge = strive? await newItem?.loadTransferable(kind: Information.self) { selectedPhotoData = knowledge } } } |
Within the WWDC22 session (What’s new within the Photographs picker), Apple’s engineer confirmed us to specify the sort as Picture.self
. That is to instruct loadTransferable
to return an occasion of Picture
. Nonetheless, I couldn’t make it work on Xcode 14 beta 4. This is the reason I used Information.self
as an alternative. Later, we are able to convert the information into an UIImage
object for displaying in an Picture
view.
The selectedPhotoData
variable is one other state variable that’s used to carry the information object:
@State non-public var selectedPhotoData: Information? |
To show the chosen picture in a picture view, we create an occasion of UIImage
utilizing the picture knowledge after which move it to the Picture
view:
Picture(uiImage: picture)
.resizable()
.scaledToFill()
.clipped()
}
if let selectedPhotoData, let picture = UIImage(knowledge: selectedPhotoData) {
Picture(uiImage: picture) .resizable() .scaledToFill() .clipped()
} |
That is the way you deal with the picture choice. To recap, we retrieve the picture knowledge when a person selects a picture from the built-in Photographs library. We save the picture knowledge to a state variable (i.e. selectedPhotoData
). SwiftUI detects the worth change and triggers a UI replace to render the picture on display.

Deciding on A number of Photographs
The PhotosPicker
view may also help a number of picture choice. Let’s construct one other fast demo to see the way it works. Once more, we have now two state variables to carry the PhotosPickerItem
objects and Information
object. Because the person might choose a couple of images, each variables develop into an array:
@State non-public var selectedItems: [PhotosPickerItem] = [] @State non-public var selectedPhotosData: [Data] = [] |
To help a number of picture choice, the trick is to make use of one other initialization technique of PhotosPicker
:
Activity {
if let knowledge = strive? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Information.self) {
selectedPhotosData.append(knowledge)
}
}
}
}
PhotosPicker(choice: $selectedItems, maxSelectionCount: 5, matching: .photos) { Picture(systemName: “picture.on.rectangle.angled”) } .onChange(of: selectedItems) { newItems in for newItem in newItems {
Activity { if let knowledge = strive? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Information.self) { selectedPhotosData.append(knowledge) } }
} } |
This technique has an extra parameter named maxSelection
. We set the worth to 5
, which implies the person is allowed to help as much as 5 images. On this case, we might seize a couple of images within the onChange
closure. What we did is to load every of the picture objects and add it to the information array (i.e. selectedPhotosData
).
For this demo view, as an alternative of making a button on the centre of the display, we put the button within the navigation bar. Right here is the complete code snippet:
ScrollView {
VStack {
ForEach(selectedPhotosData, id: .self) { photoData in
if let picture = UIImage(knowledge: photoData) {
Picture(uiImage: picture)
.resizable()
.scaledToFit()
.cornerRadius(10.0)
.padding(.horizontal)
}
}
}
}
.navigationTitle(“Photographs”)
.toolbar {
ToolbarItem(placement: .navigationBarTrailing) {
PhotosPicker(choice: $selectedItems, maxSelectionCount: 5, matching: .photos) {
Picture(systemName: “picture.on.rectangle.angled”)
}
.onChange(of: selectedItems) { newItems in
for newItem in newItems {
Activity {
if let knowledge = strive? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Information.self) {
selectedPhotosData.append(knowledge)
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
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NavigationStack {
ScrollView { VStack { ForEach(selectedPhotosData, id: .self) { photoData in if let picture = UIImage(knowledge: photoData) { Picture(uiImage: picture) .resizable() .scaledToFit() .cornerRadius(10.0) .padding(.horizontal) } } } }
.navigationTitle(“Photographs”) .toolbar { ToolbarItem(placement: .navigationBarTrailing) { PhotosPicker(choice: $selectedItems, maxSelectionCount: 5, matching: .photos) { Picture(systemName: “picture.on.rectangle.angled”) } .onChange(of: selectedItems) { newItems in for newItem in newItems {
Activity { if let knowledge = strive? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Information.self) { selectedPhotosData.append(knowledge) } }
} } } } } |
When there’s any adjustments of the selectedPhotosData
variable, SwiftUI will refresh the UI and show the images within the scroll view.

In the event you take pleasure in this text and need to dive deeper into SwiftUI, it’s possible you’ll try our Mastering SwiftUI e-book.