How to create stacks using VStack and HStack

Paul Hudson @twostraws September 3rd 2021

Updated for Xcode 16.4

Our SwiftUI content views must contain one or more views, which is the layout we want them to show. When we want more than one view on screen at a time you’ll usually want to tell SwiftUI how to arrange them, and that’s where stacks come in.

Stacks – equivalent to UIStackView in UIKit – come in three forms: horizontal (HStack), vertical (VStack) and depth-based (ZStack), with the latter being used when you want to place child views so they overlap.

Let’s start with something simple. Here’s one text view:

Text("Hello, world!")

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The words “Hello, world!” on a plain background.

If we want to place another below, we can’t just create a second text view and hope for the best – SwiftUI doesn’t know how to arrange them.

Instead, we need to place it in a vertical stack so our text views are placed above each other:

VStack {
    Text("SwiftUI")
    Text("rocks")
}

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The text “SwiftUI” above the text “rocks”.

You’ll notice that the vertical stack is placed at the center of the screen, with the labels also being centered and having some automatic space between them.

If you wanted the labels side by side horizontally, replace VStack with HStack like this:

HStack {
    Text("SwiftUI")
    Text("rocks")
}

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The text “SwiftUI” beside the text “rocks”.

How to create stacks using VStack and HStack

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