Test Your SwiftUI App on Different Devices & Platforms

Written by Team Kodeco

Testing your SwiftUI app on a variety of devices and platforms is critical to ensure optimal compatibility and user experience. SwiftUI’s built-in preview feature facilitates this process by allowing you to emulate your app’s behavior on multiple devices directly within Xcode.

You can preview your SwiftUI app on various devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Mac and even Apple Watch. Moreover, SwiftUI enables you to simulate different environmental conditions, like light and dark appearance, for more comprehensive testing.

Consider the following example that demonstrates how to use SwiftUI’s preview feature:

struct ContentView: View {
  var body: some View {
    Text("Hello, World!")
  }
}

struct ContentView_Previews: PreviewProvider {
  static var previews: some View {
    Group {
      ContentView()
        .previewDevice(PreviewDevice(rawValue: "iPhone SE (3rd generation)"))
      ContentView()
        .previewDevice(PreviewDevice(rawValue: "iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (6th generation)"))
      ContentView()
        .preferredColorScheme(.dark)
    }
  }
}

Here’s what the preview should look like. You can click through the different devices to see how the app would look on each one:

In this example, ContentView is a simple view that displays a “Hello, World!” message. The ContentView_Previews struct conforms to the PreviewProvider protocol, and is where you specify the different devices for preview. Using the .previewDevice modifier, you simulate how the view would look on an iPhone SE and an iPad Pro. Additionally, the .preferredColorScheme modifier enables testing the app in Dark Mode. To see a list of available simulators, run xcrun simctl list devicetypes in Terminal.

Through the preview feature, SwiftUI provides a powerful and efficient tool for validating your app’s layout and functionality across different devices and platforms. This not only aids in identifying and rectifying UI issues early in the development process but also helps ensure a seamless user experience across all devices.