Previous to iOS 16, if you might want to show a photograph picker for customers to decide on images from Photograph library, you must 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 parts 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 system working iOS 16 or up, you should use this new view for dealing with picture alternatives.
Let’s see the way it works with some pattern code. Please word that you might want to 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 must 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 deliver up the images picker. Right here is the fundamental utilization of PhotosPicker
:
.tint(.purple)
.controlSize(.giant)
.buttonStyle(.borderedProminent)
PhotosPicker(choice: $selectedItem, matching: .photographs)) 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 a number of traces of code, Xcode ought to present you a button within the preview.

If you happen to click on the button, it shows a Images picker for selecting photographs from the picture library. Whenever 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 helps you to specify the picture filter to use to the picture library. Within the code above, we set its worth to .photographs
to point out photographs solely. If you wish to show each photographs and movies, set the worth of the parameter to the next:
.any(of: [.images, .videos]) |
The .photographs
filter consists of all photographs within the consumer’s picture library. What if you wish to exclude reside images from the picture set? You possibly can set the worth like this:
.any(of: [.images, .not(.livePhotos)]) |
You utilize the .not
filter to exclude Dwell Images.
Dealing with the Photograph Choice
As talked about earlier, the chosen picture is mechanically saved within the selectedItem
variable, which has a kind of PhotoPickerItem
. So, how can we load the picture and show it on display screen?
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
methodology to load the asset knowledge.
.onChange(of: selectedItem) newItem in Process if let knowledge = attempt? await newItem?.loadTransferable(kind: Knowledge.self) selectedPhotoData = knowledge
|
Within the WWDC22 session (What’s new in the Photos picker), Apple’s engineer confirmed us to specify the sort as Picture.self
. That is to instruct loadTransferable
to return an occasion of Picture
. Nevertheless, I couldn’t make it work on Xcode 14 beta 4. Because of this I used Knowledge.self
as a substitute. Later, we will 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: Knowledge? |
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 consumer 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 screen.

Deciding on A number of Images
The PhotosPicker
view may also assist a number of picture choice. Let’s construct one other fast demo to see the way it works. Once more, we’ve got two state variables to carry the PhotosPickerItem
objects and Knowledge
object. For the reason that consumer could choose multiple images, each variables grow to be an array:
@State non-public var selectedItems: [PhotosPickerItem] = [] @State non-public var selectedPhotosData: [Data] = [] |
To assist a number of picture choice, the trick is to make use of one other initialization methodology of PhotosPicker
:
.onChange(of: selectedItems) newItems in
for newItem in newItems
Process
if let knowledge = attempt? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Knowledge.self)
selectedPhotosData.append(knowledge)
PhotosPicker(choice: $selectedItems, maxSelectionCount: 5, matching: .photographs) Picture(systemName: “picture.on.rectangle.angled”)
.onChange(of: selectedItems) newItems in for newItem in newItems
Process if let knowledge = attempt? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Knowledge.self) selectedPhotosData.append(knowledge)
|
This methodology has a further parameter named maxSelection
. We set the worth to 5
, which suggests the consumer is allowed to assist as much as 5 images. On this case, we could seize multiple 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 a substitute of making a button on the centre of the display screen, 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(“Images”)
.toolbar {
ToolbarItem(placement: .navigationBarTrailing) {
PhotosPicker(choice: $selectedItems, maxSelectionCount: 5, matching: .photographs)
Picture(systemName: “picture.on.rectangle.angled”)
.onChange(of: selectedItems) newItems in
for newItem in newItems
Process
if let knowledge = attempt? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Knowledge.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: .photographs) Picture(systemName: “picture.on.rectangle.angled”)
.onChange(of: selectedItems) newItems in for newItem in newItems
Process if let knowledge = attempt? await newItem.loadTransferable(kind: Knowledge.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.

If you happen to get pleasure from this text and wish to dive deeper into SwiftUI, chances are you’ll take a look at our Mastering SwiftUI book.