How to use custom view transitions in SwiftUI when navigating? - swiftui

Question

In UIKit-based application we can have custom navigation transitions using UIViewControllerAnimatedTransitioning protocol.
Is there an equivalent in SwiftUI?
I know we can already animate between removing and adding views.
But how do we do this when we push and pop to the navigation stack?

Answer 1

There isn't anything like this available in SwiftUI's APIs so far afaik. Make sure to open an enhancement request with Apple.
Implementing "navigation" on your own is a terrible idea, as you basically give all the accessibility and facility support afforded by UINavigationController.
Instead, here is a suggestion:
Either by means of a custom SwiftUI view or modifier, wrap the NavigationView with a UIViewControllerRepresentable wrapper, which in turn sets up a UIHostingController subclass, which waits for addChild(_:) to be called, which will be the navigation controller added as a child of the hosting controller. From here, if your animations are "static" (e.g. do not require any subview to subview transition), you can accomplish this here by implementing the navigation controller delegate, and providing the animation controller.
If you do need more evolved transitions (such as Photos.app's photo transition), you can create a custom UIViewRepresentable wrapper, which will serve as markers for "from" views and "to" views, you can then use those discover in UIKit, and e.g. can snapshot and animate in transitions.
Proposed API can look like this:
struct ContentView1: View {
var body: some View {
NavigationLink(destination: DetailView()) {
Image("small").customSourceTarget()
}.navigationBarTitle("Navigation")
}
}
struct ContentView2: View {
var body: some View {
Image("large").customTransitionTarget()
}
}
NavigationView {
ContentView1()
}.customAnimatable()