How to Divide Empty Space in HStack/VStack Proportionally in SwiftUI

Discover how to elegantly manage spacers in SwiftUI to proportionally divide empty space in HStack and VStack while ensuring your UI looks great!
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How to Divide Empty Space in HStack/VStack Proportionally in SwiftUI

Building user interfaces in SwiftUI often involves managing space efficiently. One common challenge developers face is how to distribute empty space within an HStack or VStack proportionally, especially when involving multiple Spacer elements. If you've ever found yourself wanting to allocate a percentage of the available space to a Spacer, you're not alone!

In this article, we'll dive into how you can effectively divide empty space between Spacers in a SwiftUI layout.

The Problem Statement

Imagine you have an HStack that contains two Spacer elements and a Text view. You want the first Spacer to take up a specific percentage of the available space (excluding the space occupied by the Text), while the second Spacer takes the remainder.

Here's a basic setup:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

However, when you attempt to use a GeometryReader to control the width of the Spacer, it does not properly account for the space consumed by the Text. As a result, you might wonder how to effectively manage this layout.

The Solution: Using PreferenceKeys

To achieve proportional spacing in SwiftUI, we can leverage PreferenceKeys. This powerful tool helps track the sizes of views, allowing us to compute the necessary spacing dynamically. We’ll illustrate this with both long and short solutions.

Long Solution with PreferenceKeys

In this approach, you'll create a struct that holds the PreferenceKey values for both the Text and the containing HStack. Here’s a step-by-step implementation:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Short Solution with Readable Extensions

Thanks to the contributions of other developers, we can simplify our implementation by utilizing an extension to read sizes. Here's the concise version:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Conclusion

By utilizing PreferenceKeys and a little bit of SwiftUI magic, you can effectively manage Spacer elements to allocate empty space in an HStack or VStack as needed. Whether you choose the long or short solution, you now have the tools to make your SwiftUI interfaces both functional and visually appealing.

By employing these methods, you can ensure that your designs remain flexible, accommodating various screen sizes and orientations while maintaining the intended layout.

Now that you understand how to divide empty space proportionally, you can enhance your user interfaces and create a better user experience in your SwiftUI applications.