# SwiftUI

75 Hacker News commenters recommended SwiftUI and 121 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 4 years (8 owners).

**Verdict:** Apple's declarative UI framework; people praise its concise code and adaptive layouts, but critics agree documentation is weak and UIKit/AppKit fallbacks are often needed.

## Why people recommend it

- Less code, clean APIs (3 comments): "The APIs seem well thought-out, I needed less code than I would have to do the same thing in React" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240221)) "for most things you can build so much with just SwiftUI and a few Apple frameworks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46717348)) "SwiftUI is undeniably clean in a lot of ways, it presents beautifully and fits on slides well, but that matters less and less" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147975))
- Adapts across devices and screen sizes (2 comments): "The abstraction is huge advantage, especially when targeting different devices and screen sizes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654434)) "Cocoa and SwiftUI are more consistent in the sense that a lot of stuff automatically adapts when Apple changes styling" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657772))
- Good performance on recent iOS (2 comments): "SwiftUI became "very good" as of iOS 26 (in part because the performance gap mostly evaporated)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148340)) "the most complete UI framework that is native, fast, performant and works very well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46419137))
- Used in many real apps (2 comments): "There are hundreds of thousands of apps in the App Store that are 100% SwiftUI. They are real." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147799)) "In my current app, my views are 100% SwiftUI. One of them uses a SwiftUI List which typically has hundreds of thousands of items" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173774))

## What people warn about

- Poor documentation (4 comments): "There is poor documentation. The biggest trick — small views, think about what values are going to trigger a refresh." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49148192)) "mostly because of the lack of documentation, and the gaps where you still need to drop down to AppKit/UIKit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147567)) "AI makes up for SwiftUI's biggest weaknesses: Apple's wonky documentation and the need to know when to fall back to AppKit/UIKit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147762))
- Gaps requiring UIKit/AppKit fallback (3 comments): "for complex and performance first, I will just use UIKit instead, it save a log of time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151009)) "It's not unusual to have to drop down to the UIKit version for some little thing that Apple couldn't be arsed to port over." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49150992)) "mostly because of the lack of documentation, and the gaps where you still need to drop down to AppKit/UIKit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147567))
- Performance and polish lag (4 comments): "SwiftUI just not being fully-cooked and Apple trying to shove it into a bunch of areas without enough attention to performance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47841902)) "it results in a lot of things just feeling janky, because one-size-fits-all rule and precise polish are fundamentally at odds" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524373)) "Apple has made a similar transition recently from the relatively efficient AppKit/UIKit to the bloated dog that is SwiftUI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47656954))
- Works well only on newest OS (3 comments): "Problem with SwiftUI is that it only works well on macOS 26, maybe one version prior." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46480516)) "Layouts will not magically be not dog shit on iOS because Apple put out another version of SwiftUI that you can't use in prod because nobody has the update." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49636385)) "Layouts will not magically be not dog shit on iOS because Apple put out another version of SwiftUI that you can't use in prod" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642492))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Qt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qt.md): 191 recommend
- [GTK](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gtk.md): 85 recommend
- [Windows Forms](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winforms.md): 76 recommend
- [Tcl/Tk](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tcl-tk.md): 61 recommend
- [Avalonia UI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/avalonia.md): 51 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "SwiftUI", https://hackerapproved.com/p/swiftui/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).