How to create a picker and read values from it

Paul Hudson @twostraws December 1st 2022

Updated for Xcode 16.4

SwiftUI’s Picker view manages to combine UIPickerView, UISegmentedControl, and UITableView in one, while also adapting to other styles on other operating systems. The great thing is that we really don’t have to care how it works – SwiftUI does a good job of adapting itself automatically to its environment.

As with most other controls, you must attach your picker to some sort of state that will track the picker’s selection. For example, this creates a colors array and an integer that stores which color was selected, then uses that with a picker and a text view so you can see values being read back:

struct ContentView: View {
    var colors = ["Red", "Green", "Blue", "Tartan"]
    @State private var selectedColor = "Red"

    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            Picker("Please choose a color", selection: $selectedColor) {
                ForEach(colors, id: \.self) {
                    Text($0)
                }
            }
            Text("You selected: \(selectedColor)")
        }
    }
}

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