UIKit
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 18 of 45 GUI frameworks by recommenders
Mature, stable Apple framework for complex, performant interfaces with Auto Layout. Critics find the API clunky and say Apple is favoring SwiftUI.
Mature, stable Apple framework for complex, performant interfaces with Auto Layout. Critics find the API clunky and say Apple is favoring SwiftUI.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 21
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 21 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Seen as better than SwiftUI
“I find the UIKit code I get, is a lot more robust and performant, than the SwiftUI code.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Use Boring Languages with LLMs” “it is a huge step backwards in dev-ex from autolayout and UIKit”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity” “If you've used UIKit to any large degree, how bad SwiftUI is”
Comment from 18 May 2026 in “Native all the way, until you need text” - Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity”
- Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Bending Spoons laid off almost everybody at Vimeo yesterday”
Robust, performant for complex interfaces
“good old UIKit based on MVC (Model-View-Controller) is simply excellent for building scalable, complex and performant UI's”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity” “I find the UIKit code I get, is a lot more robust and performant, than the SwiftUI code.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Use Boring Languages with LLMs” “large collections of thumbnails that fetch asynchronously? Use UIKit.”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity” - Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “The Overcomplexity of the Shadcn Radio Button”
Mature, stable, feature complete
“UIKit which is most stable and feature complete”
Comment from 2 Aug 2026 in “SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity” “nearly all needs are pretty well covered”
Comment from 24 Nov 2025 in “Shai-Hulud Returns: Over 300 NPM Packages Infected” “UIkit still exists and is usable.”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11” Auto Layout handles nearly any design
“I find UIKit to be a pain, but with it, and Autolayout, I can do almost anything.”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “Fast and Hard Code” “I never had issues doing any design thrown at me using AppKit, UIKit or SwiftUI.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Clunky API, view controllers, constraints
“if you just fix some of the worst API’s, like embedding ViewControllers and adding constraints in code”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity” “cleaning up some of the UIKit syntanx and framework (simplifying it)”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity” “UIKit etc never made sense to me after years”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Claude is an Electron App because we've lost native” Apple's focus shifted to SwiftUI
“I wished apple just made it as a Template Rendering framework, and integrated wit with UIKit, and just modernized UIKit a bit.”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity” “But just imagine if they'd spent this time making them easy in UIKit.”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “SwiftUI After 7 Years: A Story of Mediocrity” “the dual replacement of UIKit and AppKit with SwiftUI”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “If you want to create a button from scratch, you must first create the universe”
Other GUI frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other GUI frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qt | 191 | 133 | 59% | 12 | 15 yrs7 owners | — |
| GTK | 85 | 118 | 42% | 12 | — | — |
| Windows Forms | 76 | 33 | 70% | 12 | 15 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| SwiftUI | 75 | 121 | 38% | 11 | 4 yrs8 owners | — |
| UIKitThis page | 21 | 3 | 88% | 9 | — | Approved |
What people said
29 of the 33 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“We don't have access to a stable underlying element like we would with plain UIKit.”
“equivalents of UIKit/SwiftUI components that do most of the layout/navigation heavy lifting for you”
“these freebies are handed out in UIKit too, for cases where declarative UI is cumbersome”
“I find UIKit to be a pain, but with it, and Autolayout, I can do almost anything.”
“good old UIKit based on MVC (Model-View-Controller) is simply excellent for building scalable, complex and performant UI's”
“it is a huge step backwards in dev-ex from autolayout and UIKit”
“But just imagine if they'd spent this time making them easy in UIKit.”
“UIKit and autolayout (and Interface Builder) was better.”
“if you just fix some of the worst API’s, like embedding ViewControllers and adding constraints in code”
“I wished apple just made it as a Template Rendering framework, and integrated wit with UIKit, and just modernized UIKit a bit.”
“cleaning up some of the UIKit syntanx and framework (simplifying it)”
“large collections of thumbnails that fetch asynchronously? Use UIKit.”
“you'll always have a bad time if you try to mix the two in a single "view" / "frame"”
“the imperative UIKit is also quite easy to read and review”
“It used to make things so much simpler in UIKit when you could just see the view bounds”
“it's just big a huge pain to actually implement without a lot of custom code”
“UIKit which is most stable and feature complete”
“the dual replacement of UIKit and AppKit with SwiftUI”
“I never had issues doing any design thrown at me using AppKit, UIKit or SwiftUI.”
“I find the UIKit code I get, is a lot more robust and performant, than the SwiftUI code.”
“If you've used UIKit to any large degree, how bad SwiftUI is”
“It was an absolute nightmare. I _barely_ managed to make it work.”
“There's a lot of realy brilliant stuff in their system frameworks, and in SwiftUI, Cocoa, and UIKit.”
“UIKit etc never made sense to me after years”
“I find it worse than UIKit in basically every regard”
“writing more complex components in pure UIKit”
“UIkit still exists and is usable.”
“the "bones" of the app are imperative AppKit/UIKit”
“nearly all needs are pretty well covered”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.