Building a Hero animation with SwiftUI

Wouldn’t we all agree that animations significantly enhance the overall experience of an app? However, building them can sometimes be a challenge. SwiftUI has been a real game-changer in recent years, offering a powerful yet simple way to achieve complex animations and interactions with minimal code — something that used to require much more effort in UIKit. The beauty of SwiftUI lies in its ability to simplify these once-difficult tasks, making advanced animations more accessible to developers of all levels.

What’s even better is that SwiftUI can seamlessly coexist with UIKit in the same project. This hybrid approach allows developers to take advantage of SwiftUI’s modern declarative syntax while still leveraging UIKit where necessary, particularly for features or components that aren’t fully supported in SwiftUI yet. This flexibility not only streamlines development but also provides the best of both worlds, allowing us to transition smoothly without abandoning existing UIKit-based solutions. Ultimately, it makes our work more efficient and less stressful, as we can choose the right tool for the right task.

Apple has done a fantastic job with many of its apps, but today we’ll focus on an example from the Apple App Store — specifically, the hero animation, which features a smooth and visually appealing transition. Our goal will be to replicate this…