SwiftUI in 2025: Real Capabilities, Limitations & the Truth Developers Avoid

Since its introduction in 2019, SwiftUI has promised a fresh, declarative future for building user interfaces on Apple platforms. Apple markets it as the “future of UI development,” and each WWDC brings new updates, features, and APIs that make it more appealing. For many, SwiftUI has become a central tool in modern iOS development, enabling faster UI building and better integration across Apple ecosystems. But now it’s 2025 — is SwiftUI truly production-ready for everything? Or are there still rough edges we don’t talk about enough?

What SwiftUI Excels At in 2025 (Expanded)

SwiftUI has come a long way since 2019. By 2025, it has matured into a powerful tool — not perfect, but more than capable in many areas of iOS and cross-platform Apple development. Here’s where it truly shines:

1. Rapid UI Development

SwiftUI’s declarative syntax lets you build interfaces faster than ever. The ability to see real-time previews in Xcode speeds up iteration and reduces the build-test cycle dramatically in mobile development.

VStack {

    Text("Welcome")

        .font(.title)

    Button("Continue") {

        isPresented = true

    }

}

– Five lines of code can give you a full, styled layout. No AutoLayout constraints, no boilerplate.

2. Cross-Platform Consistency

You can now write one SwiftUI view and use it across iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and even visionOS with minimal changes. Shared logic, shared UI — SwiftUI encourages unification, which is a huge productivity gain.

3. Native Support for Dark Mode, Dynamic Type, and Accessibility

SwiftUI makes it effortless to support Apple system features:

• Text scales automatically with user settings
• Color schemes adapt to Dark/Light modes
• Accessibility elements are built into the view hierarchy

4. Widgets & Apple Watch Development

SwiftUI is now the default for building widgets and watchOS apps. UIKit is not even supported in many watchOS contexts anymore, making SwiftUI the go-to solution for lightweight and fast interfaces.

5. Clean, Declarative Code Structure

Code written in SwiftUI is often more readable and maintainable. It encourages modularity and composability, allowing developers to build views as simple, reusable components.

Where SwiftUI Still Struggles in 2025

Despite many improvements, SwiftUI is not a one-size-fits-all solution. There are still significant limitations that make UIKit a necessary part of many projects.

1. Poor Debugging Tools

Debugging SwiftUI layouts remains frustrating. There’s:

• No visual hierarchy debugger like UIKit’s View Debugger
• Limited insights into why views aren’t rendering
• Error messages like “Modifying state during view update, this will cause undefined behavior” — with no clear fix

2. Layout System Edge Cases

Although VStack, HStack, and ZStack handle most layouts, when you need advanced control (e.g. percentage-based layouts, alignment across multiple layers, grid-like UIs), the layout engine can become a bottleneck.

Workarounds often involve:

• Complex geometry readers
• Unintuitive preference keys
• Mixing UIKit with UIViewRepresentable

3. Unpredictable Behavior with Dynamic Data

Dynamic lists (e.g. List, ForEach) sometimes behave inconsistently:

• Views can re-render unnecessarily
• Animations may break silently
• List scrolling glitches when working with external data sources

4. Limited Customization

SwiftUI controls are powerful — until you try to heavily customize them.

• Want a UIScrollView with advanced gesture detection? Not fun.
• Need a floating text input with live validation and a custom keyboard? You’ll often fall back to UIKit.

5. Animations and Transitions

While SwiftUI animations are simple for basic transitions, they lack the advanced control UIKit provides through UIViewPropertyAnimator, CATransaction, or Core Animation. Synchronizing multiple animations or building sequenced interactions is still very limiting.

Myths vs Reality

Myth 1: “SwiftUI is ready to replace UIKit completely.”
Reality: Not quite. UIKit is still critical for many apps, especially those relying on advanced UI patterns, third-party SDKs, or fine-grained performance tuning.

Myth 2: “You should refactor your UIKit app into SwiftUI.”
Reality: Migration can be risky, especially if your UIKit code is mature and stable. SwiftUI is ideal for modular components, not full rewrites.

Myth 3: “SwiftUI speeds up development.”
Reality: Initially, yes. But you’ll often spend hours working around limitations or debugging obscure view hierarchy issues.

SwiftUI in 2025 is no longer the experimental toy it once was — it’s powerful, elegant, and integrated deeply into Apple’s ecosystem. But it’s not a total replacement for UIKit. Not yet. Possibly not ever.

The truth? SwiftUI is best used as part of a hybrid strategy — leveraging its speed and elegance where it fits, and relying on UIKit’s maturity where needed.