Previous to iOS 16, if it is advisable to show a photograph picker for customers to decide on images from Picture library, it’s a must 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 stated, 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 assist gadget operating 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 notice that it is advisable to use Xcode 14 beta 4 to observe this tutorial.
Utilizing PhotosPicker in SwiftUI
The PhotosPicker
view is bundled within the PhotosUI
framework. Earlier than utilizing it, it’s a must to first import the framework:
Subsequent, we declare a state variable to carry the chosen picture:
@State personal var selectedItem: PhotosPickerItem? |
It’s fairly simple to deliver up the images picker. Right here is the essential 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.

For those who click on the button, it shows a Images picker for selecting photos from the picture library. Once you select a photograph, the picture picker mechanically dismisses and the chosen picture merchandise is saved within the selectedItem
variable.

Filtering the Images
The matching
parameter permits 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’ll be able to set the worth like this:
.any(of: [.images, .not(.livePhotos)]) |
You employ the .not
filter to exclude Dwell Images.
Dealing with the Picture Choice
As talked about earlier, the chosen picture is mechanically 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 take heed to the replace of the selectedItem
variable. Every time there’s a change, we name the loadTransferable
methodology to load the asset knowledge.
.onChange(of: selectedItem) { newItem in Job { if let knowledge = attempt? await newItem?.loadTransferable(kind: Information.self) { selectedPhotoData = knowledge } } } |
Within the WWDC22 session (What’s new within the Images picker), Apple’s engineer confirmed us to specify the kind 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. That is why I used Information.self
as an alternative. Later, we are able to convert the info into an UIImage
object for displaying in an Picture
view.
The selectedPhotoData
variable is one other state variable that’s used to carry the info object:
@State personal var selectedPhotoData: Information? |
To show the chosen picture in a picture view, we create an occasion of UIImage
utilizing the picture knowledge after which cross 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 Images 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.

Choosing A number of Images
The PhotosPicker
view also can assist a number of picture choice. Let’s construct one other fast demo to see the way it works. Once more, now we have 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 personal var selectedItems: [PhotosPickerItem] = [] @State personal var selectedPhotosData: [Data] = [] |
To assist a number of picture choice, the trick is to make use of one other initialization methodology of PhotosPicker
:
Job {
if let knowledge = attempt? 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 {
Job { if let knowledge = attempt? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Information.self) { selectedPhotosData.append(knowledge) } }
} } |
This methodology has an extra parameter named maxSelection
. We set the worth to 5
, which suggests the person is allowed to assist 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 gadgets and add it to the info 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 total 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(“Images”)
.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 {
Job {
if let knowledge = attempt? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Information.self) {
selectedPhotosData.append(knowledge)
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 |
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(“Images”) .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 {
Job { if let knowledge = attempt? 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.

For those who get pleasure from this text and need to dive deeper into SwiftUI, you might take a look at our Mastering SwiftUI e-book.