Hi all,
I am interested in developing a watchOS app and in my preparation study I noticed that all tutorials refer to swiftui. I have been developing so far in swift with uikit and Xcode 14.3. When I try to create a new Xcode project for WatchOS, I do not have any swift option to choose from. Is this the norm now?
Thank you in advance, Nikos
To create watchOS user interfaces, either SwiftUI, or storyboards through WatchKit (deprecated) can be used. SwiftUI is much more flexible and allows more control compared to storyboards.
Apple strongly recommends using SwiftUI, and it is very much the norm now. See: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/watchkit/
Hope that helps, good luck!
Hi DarrenCNDR,
Thank you for the feedback. I guess I should invest in SwiftUI if I want to seriously develop a WatchOS app.
I appreciate your reply.
Take care,
Nikos
No, it is no more possible to use storyboards and WatchKit, very unfortunate:
Xcode 14 release notes:
Fixed: WatchKit storyboards are deprecated in watchOS 7.0 and later. Please migrate to SwiftUI and the SwiftUI Lifecycle. (94058186)
See the other thread on the topic: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/709843
Hi Claude31,
Thank you for your reply. Yes, it is unfortunate. I did some research before posting my question because I was not sure if I am missing something. I guess Apple is promoting SwiftUI for WatchOS development. I just have to comply :(
Take care
As someone who recently converted their WatchKit app to SwiftUI, it is faster, more responsive, and provides users with a much better experience.
It is definitely worth investing the time. Since you already know Swift it shouldn't take too long to figure it out. I was going from Objective-C to Swift and SwiftUI, so I had issues...
Also, I found that I could do pretty much 95% of what I needed without any help or internet searching at all. It was only for specific things that I needed to reach out.
Take a look at a thread I posted on here, where I figured out how to get views to update properly when data changes: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/712602
Hi darkpaw,
I appreciate your informative reply. I can see why SwiftUI is the preferable choice for WatchOS app. I am already spending time to learn. Thank you for the link as well.
Take care :)