Looming Deadlines – Devlog 002

Starting over with a new Xcode Project, SwiftData setup, CloudKit syncing, and opening windows.

I spent a couple of hours working with the prototype project from last year. I pulled the immersive space and all the code for 3D text. Then I added macOS as one of the supported platforms and was blown away by the number of visionOS-only features I was using. Things like pushWindow, ornaments, toolbar placement. I think I had around 60 reasons why the app would not build for macOS. I considered fixing each of these issues with platform conditionals, but that seemed like a sure path to unmanageable code.

I decided it was time to a fresh start. I created a new Xcode project yesterday. I started with SwifUi multi-platform project template. I also selected SwiftData checked the boxes to sync the data with CloudKit. This gave me a single window with a list of items and a button to add records. I made some very minimal changes to the Item model.

import Foundation
import SwiftData

@Model
final class Item {
    var id = UUID()
    var creationTimestamp: Date = Date()

    var title: String = ""
    var deadline_date: Date = Date()
    var status: String = "Active" // TODO: make an enum for status values

    init(title: String, deadline_date: Date, status: String) {

        self.title = title
        self.deadline_date = deadline_date
        self.status = status
    }
}

Used the existing content view to cobble together a few things. A list of items hosted in a NavigationSplitView. A custom (and very temporary) row that will navigate to a detail view. On visionOS and macOS, this will display as a two-column UI, but on iOS it will collapse into a stack. I borrowed the countdown views that I made last summer and added a mesh gradient as a background for now.

This got me far enough that could add records on each device and see them showing up on the others. Success! I had a little more time so I went to see if I could get floating windows working on macOS. I recently read an article by Natalia Panferova that described how to make one those minimal macOS windows. The only thing I had to add to her example was .windowLevel(.floating).

My macOS window. I still need to work on the sizing for this, but it was good enough for today.

        WindowGroup(id: "MacFloating", for: PersistentIdentifier.self, content: { $id in
            SingleRoot(id: $id)
                .modelContainer(sharedModelContainer)
                .frame(width: 680, height: 300)
                .toolbar(removing: .title)
                .toolbarBackground(.hidden, for: .windowToolbar)
        })
        .windowManagerRole(.associated)
        .windowLevel(.floating)
        .windowResizability(.contentSize)
        .windowBackgroundDragBehavior(.enabled)

My visionOS window just uses .defaultSize and passes in the shared model.

        WindowGroup(id: "VisionPopout", for: PersistentIdentifier.self, content: { $id in
            SingleRoot(id: $id)
                .modelContainer(sharedModelContainer)
        })
        .defaultSize(CGSize(width: 680, height: 300))

Watch this video to see the floating macOS window vs. a regular system window in visionOS.

Next up, I’ll start thinking about the customization that I want to provide and how to model them into data that I can store and sync with SwiftData.