liyanan2004/richtext

A supplementary TextView for SwiftUI that provides better text selection experience, as well as enabling native view embedding using declarative syntax.

Requirements

Xcode 26.0+
iOS 16.0+
macOS 13.0+

Documentation

You can view documentation on:

Getting Started

Add RichText as a dependency in your Swift Package Manager manifest.

.package(url: "https://github.com/LiYanan2004/RichText.git", branch: "main"),

Include RichText in any targets that need it.

.target(
    name: "MyTarget",
    dependencies: [
        .product(name: "RichText", package: "RichText"),
    ]
),

Plain String & Attributed String

TextView provides a result builder that accepts both plain string and AttributedString.

let packageName: AttributedString = {
    var value = AttributedString("RichText")
    value.foregroundColor = .blue
    value.font = .headline
    return value
}()

TextView {
    "Hello, "
    packageName
    "!"
}

Inline SwiftUI Views

You can embed SwiftUI view along with other text as well, while preserving text selection capability.

RichText will try to extract SwiftUI.Text content and convert it into AttributedString. If that fails, a plain string will be used instead.

TextView {
    Text("Hi, This is **RichText**.")
}

Other SwiftUI views are added as an individual text element, which means text selection will either include or exclude the entire view.

TextView {
    "Tap the"
    Space()
    Button("button") {
        print("Button Clicked")
    }
    Space()
    "to continue."
}

TextView {
    "Rating: "
    
    // The whole `HStack` will be either selected or deselected.
    HStack(spacing: 2) {
        ForEach(0..<5) { _ in
            Image(systemName: "star.fill")
                .foregroundStyle(.yellow)
        }
    }
}

Dynamic Views

If the embedded view contains its own state, you will need to provide a unique view identifier using .id(_:) to bind the view's identity, otherwise, its state will be reset whenever the textContent is recomputed.

In the following example, the state of the globe icon will get reset when ContentView.body gets re-computed without explicit id specified.

[!TIP] You may need to add .id(_:) view modifier directly under embedded view.
Currently, .id(_:) inside View.Body is not recognizable.

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var isOpaque: Bool = true
   
    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            Toggle("Opaque", isOn: $isOpaque)
            TextView {
                "Hello "
                ColorfulGlobeIcon()
                    .id("globe-icon") // Explicitly bind the identity here.
                " World"
            }
            .opacity(isOpaque ? 1 : 0.5)
        }
    }
}

struct ColorfulGlobeIcon: View {
    @State var color: Color = .random
    
    var body: some View {
        Image(systemName: "globe")
            .foregroundStyle(color)
            .onTapGesture { 
                color = .random
            }
            .id("globe-icon") // ❌ This does NOT bind the identity of the view internally
    }
}

Troubleshooting

SwiftUI `Font` is only reflected on OS 26+

SwiftUI.Font.Resolved is only available on OS 26+. We use that to convert a Font into PlatformFont.

If you need to customize font on older OS version, use PlatformFont explicitly.

TextView("TextView")
    .font(PlatformFont.systemFont(ofSize: 28)) // This would work consistently across OS versions.

Package Metadata

Repository: liyanan2004/richtext

Default branch: main

README: README.md