Make a placeholder view in SwiftUI with redacted()

⋅ 4 min read ⋅ SwiftUI

Table of Contents

In iOS 14, SwiftUI has a new modifier to redact any content. You apply it to any view with a new view modifier, redacted(reason:). This modifier required a reason modifier, which tells SwiftUI the reason for this redaction. Right now, Apple provides only one reason, .placeholder.

Here’s how it looks:

Text("Hello, SwiftUI!")
.redacted(reason: .placeholder)
Redact with placeholder style
Redact with placeholder style

As the name implies, placeholder reason redact content in a way to be used as a placeholder before the actual content is loaded.

Since Apple design RedactionReasons as an option set, I expected more reason that we can use and combine in the future. Something like .sensitive reason with pixelation effect or .animated which produce a shimmering effect would be a nice add up.

public struct RedactionReasons : OptionSet

Complex View

Redaction reasons pass along to all child views. That's mean you can call it on a parent view, and all subviews would get the same reasons.

struct LandmarkView: View {    
var body: some View {
VStack(alignment: .leading) {
Image("bigsur")
.resizable()
.frame(width: 100, height: 100)
.clipShape(Circle())
Text("Big Sur \(Image(systemName: "sun.dust"))")
.font(.title)
.fontWeight(.bold)
.foregroundColor(Color.blue)
Text("Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy").font(.body)
Button("Bookmark", action: {
print("Bookmark")
})
}
.padding()
}
}

Calling .redacted on LandmarkView would redact all of its subviews.

LandmarkView().redacted(reason: .placeholder)
Redaction reasons pass along to all child views.
Redaction reasons pass along to all child views.

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Opt-out

If you don't want some view to be redacted, you can opt-out by using .unredacted() which removes any redaction reason that is applied to the view.

Text("Big Sur \(Image(systemName: "sun.dust"))")
.font(.title)
.fontWeight(.bold)
.foregroundColor(Color.blue)
.unredacted()

Add .unredacted() to Text will produce the following result:

Removes any redaction reason that is applied to a view with unredacted()
Removes any redaction reason that is applied to a view with unredacted()

Caveats

At current Xcode beta (beta 6), redact a view only changes its appearance, but it can still receive user interaction. If you have a redacted button, beware that the button can still receive user action.

Redaction-aware view

We can make our view redaction-aware and respond to the redaction reason by observing the value in @Environment(\.redactionReasons).

In the following example, we modify our LandmarkView to show SF Symbols image over the Big Sur image if a redaction reason is presented.

struct LandmarkView: View {
@Environment(\.redactionReasons) private var reasons // 1

var body: some View {
VStack(alignment: .leading) {
if reasons.isEmpty { // 2
Image("bigsur")
.resizable()
.frame(width: 100, height: 100)
.clipShape(Circle())
} else {
Image("bigsur")
.resizable()
.frame(width: 100, height: 100)
.clipShape(Circle())
.overlay( // 3
Image(systemName: "photo")
.font(.system(size: 34, weight: .bold))
.foregroundColor(.white)
.unredacted())
}
Text("Big Sur \(Image(systemName: "sun.dust"))")
.font(.title)
.fontWeight(.bold)
.foregroundColor(Color.blue)
.unredacted()
Text("Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy").font(.body)
Button("Bookmark", action: {
print("Bookmark")
})
}
.padding()
}
}

<1> We add @Environment(\.redactionReasons) for our view to read redaction reason and act accordingly.
<2> If the reason is not set (reasons.isEmpty), we show the image as is.
<3> If the reason is set (.redacted is applied), we show SF Symbols over our redacted image.

Redaction-aware view
Redaction-aware view

We can also tackle the button problem by disabling it if the view is being redacted.

Button("Bookmark", action: {
print("Bookmark")
}).disabled(!reasons.isEmpty)

Conclusion

Tips and tricks in this article should be enough for you to work around limitations you encounter with redaction API. Even though we only have a redaction reason right now, I think Apple will support more variation in this API's rendering effect in the future, and I'm looking forward to it.

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