By the end, you will know how to create hassle-free and user-friendly Apple TV apps that users will touch and feel as they navigate with the remote controller.<\/p>\n
Let’s begin with fundamentals:<\/p>\n
1. Enabling an element to be focusable:<\/strong><\/h3>\nYou can make a view focusable in SwiftUI for tvOS using the focusable() modifier. Here’s an easy example to know how it works.<\/p>\n
![\"focusableImage\"](\"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-ttn-blog\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-28-at-11.44.54\u202fAM-1024x276.png\")
<\/a>focusableImage<\/p><\/div>\n
2. Switch focus between two buttons:<\/strong><\/h3>\nTo control our focus between buttons, we bought to remember which button we are focused on and update the UI to indicate the same. This is implemented with SwiftUI with the FocusState.<\/p>\n
Steps to handle focus:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Define focusable field<\/strong>: Create an enum FocusField<\/strong> (e.g., .button1, .button2) to represent the focusable buttons.<\/li>\n
- Track the focused element:<\/strong> Use @FocusState<\/strong> var focusedField: FocusField? to keep track of the currently focused button.<\/li>\n
- Change focus of buttons:<\/strong> \u00a0use .focused<\/strong>($focusedField, equals: .button1).<\/li>\n
- Update UI based on focus:<\/strong> Yellow if focused and Gray if not focused.<\/li>\n
- Set initial focus<\/strong>: In .onAppear<\/strong>, set the default focus.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
A simple example to demonstrate how it works<\/p>\n
![\"defaultFocusbutton\"](\"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-ttn-blog\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screenshot-2025-09-09-at-3.47.41\u202fPM-1024x185.png\")
<\/a>defaultFocusbutton<\/p><\/div>\n
![\"focusButton\"](\"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-ttn-blog\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-28-at-12.39.24\u202fPM-1024x839.png\")
<\/a>focusButton<\/p><\/div>\n
By using .focused<\/strong>($focusedField, equals: .button1), we are able to set and follow the current focus. To dynamically change the color of text when focused, we check the current focusedField value and set an alternate color when the element has focus.<\/p>\n3. Manually Moving Focus to a Specific Element When Alignment Breaks:<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn SwiftUI for tvOS, when handling this scenario, we can use onMoveCommand<\/strong> to implement custom focus navigation. Let\u2019s look at some sample code to see how we can move focus between elements.<\/p>\n\n- As we have pressesBegan<\/strong> in UIKit, similarly in SwiftUI, we have “customFocusNavigation”<\/strong> to get the direction of the remote from the current focus element.<\/li>\n
- So, according to the direction we get from the onMoveCommand<\/strong>, we can set our custom focus.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A simple example to demonstrate how it works<\/p>\n
![\"focusableImage\"](\"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-ttn-blog\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-28-at-11.44.54\u202fAM.png\")
<\/a>focusableImage<\/p><\/div>\n
2. Switch focus between two buttons:<\/strong><\/h3>\nTo control our focus between buttons, we bought to remember which button we are focused on and update the UI to indicate the same. This is implemented with SwiftUI with the FocusState.<\/p>\n
Steps to handle focus:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Define focusable field<\/strong>: Create an enum FocusField<\/strong> (e.g., .button1, .button2) to represent the focusable buttons.<\/li>\n
- Track the focused element:<\/strong> Use @FocusState<\/strong> var focusedField: FocusField? to keep track of the currently focused button.<\/li>\n
- Change focus of buttons:<\/strong> \u00a0use .focused<\/strong>($focusedField, equals: .button1).<\/li>\n
- Update UI based on focus:<\/strong> Yellow if focused and Gray if not focused.<\/li>\n
- Set initial focus<\/strong>: In .onAppear<\/strong>, set the default focus.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
A simple example to demonstrate how it works<\/p>\n
<\/a>defaultFocusbutton<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>focusButton<\/p><\/div>\n
By using .focused<\/strong>($focusedField, equals: .button1), we are able to set and follow the current focus. To dynamically change the color of text when focused, we check the current focusedField value and set an alternate color when the element has focus.<\/p>\n3. Manually Moving Focus to a Specific Element When Alignment Breaks:<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn SwiftUI for tvOS, when handling this scenario, we can use onMoveCommand<\/strong> to implement custom focus navigation. Let\u2019s look at some sample code to see how we can move focus between elements.<\/p>\n\n- As we have pressesBegan<\/strong> in UIKit, similarly in SwiftUI, we have “customFocusNavigation”<\/strong> to get the direction of the remote from the current focus element.<\/li>\n
- So, according to the direction we get from the onMoveCommand<\/strong>, we can set our custom focus.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A simple example to demonstrate how it works<\/p>\n
- \n
- Define focusable field<\/strong>: Create an enum FocusField<\/strong> (e.g., .button1, .button2) to represent the focusable buttons.<\/li>\n
- Track the focused element:<\/strong> Use @FocusState<\/strong> var focusedField: FocusField? to keep track of the currently focused button.<\/li>\n
- Change focus of buttons:<\/strong> \u00a0use .focused<\/strong>($focusedField, equals: .button1).<\/li>\n
- Update UI based on focus:<\/strong> Yellow if focused and Gray if not focused.<\/li>\n
- Set initial focus<\/strong>: In .onAppear<\/strong>, set the default focus.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
A simple example to demonstrate how it works<\/p>\n
<\/a>defaultFocusbutton<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>focusButton<\/p><\/div>\n
By using .focused<\/strong>($focusedField, equals: .button1), we are able to set and follow the current focus. To dynamically change the color of text when focused, we check the current focusedField value and set an alternate color when the element has focus.<\/p>\n
3. Manually Moving Focus to a Specific Element When Alignment Breaks:<\/strong><\/h3>\n
In SwiftUI for tvOS, when handling this scenario, we can use onMoveCommand<\/strong> to implement custom focus navigation. Let\u2019s look at some sample code to see how we can move focus between elements.<\/p>\n
- \n
- As we have pressesBegan<\/strong> in UIKit, similarly in SwiftUI, we have “customFocusNavigation”<\/strong> to get the direction of the remote from the current focus element.<\/li>\n
- So, according to the direction we get from the onMoveCommand<\/strong>, we can set our custom focus.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
A simple example to demonstrate how it works<\/p>\n
- So, according to the direction we get from the onMoveCommand<\/strong>, we can set our custom focus.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Track the focused element:<\/strong> Use @FocusState<\/strong> var focusedField: FocusField? to keep track of the currently focused button.<\/li>\n