We're about 5 years past the introduction of SwiftUI and it's impressive how far the framework has come in this time. However a part of SwiftUI that has been noticeably inferior than its UIKit counterpart is anything to do with MapKit UI.

MapKit, particularly when used with UIKit components, is a very detailed and well thought-out piece of kit, but that's only really true when used in a UIKit context. It powers a lot of what you see in my app Petty. As such, I have tried to keep a close eye on its development alongside SwiftUI. An essential part of almost any map-heavy application is the ability to be shown more information upon selection of a pin or point on the map. This could be by pushing to a detail view, being presented with a sheet/overlay, or something else entirely.

It escaped my attention at the time, but as of the iOS 17 updates introduced at WWDC 2023, it is possible to do this with SwiftUI's new Map.init<SelectedValue: Hashable>(selection: Binding<SelectedValue?>) initialiser. The code is dead simple, too. For this example, let's show a few pins on a map, and when one is selected, present a sheet displaying the name of the location.

We start with a model to represent the data:

struct StationDetails: Identifiable, Hashable {
    
    struct Position: Hashable {
        let lat: Double
        let lon: Double
        
        var coordinate: CLLocationCoordinate2D {
            CLLocationCoordinate2D(latitude: lat, longitude: lon)
        }
    }
    
    let id: String
    
    let name: String
    let position: Position
}

And now let's plug it into a Map:

struct ContentView: View {
    
    @State private var selection: StationDetails? = nil
    
    let stations: [StationDetails]
    
    var body: some View {
        Map(selection: $selection) {
            ForEach(stations) { station in
                Marker(station.name, coordinate: station.position.coordinate)
                    .tag(station)
            }
        }
        .sheet(item: $selection) { station in
            NavigationStack {
                Text(station.name)
            }
            .presentationDetents([.medium])
        }
    }
}

And that's it. Really! This code is fully-functioning. I haven't seen any good posts about this Map(selection:) initialiser – so here one is. I hope it's helpful. Now of course we could make this nicer by doing things like moving the map position so that the pin appears centred when the sheet appears – but that functionality is beyond the scope of this post.

Since binding to selections is now possible, we're close to the point where I would no longer default to laying out a map with UIKit. The last thing keeping me in MapKit-UIKit-by-default land is lack of support for pin clustering. One can hope for WWDC25, right?

Armed with this knowledge, go forth and react to map pin selection changes.

Here's the full code from the above example, putting everything together including imports and a SwiftUI preview:

import MapKit
import SwiftUI

struct StationDetails: Identifiable, Hashable {
    
    struct Position: Hashable {
        let lat: Double
        let lon: Double
        
        var coordinate: CLLocationCoordinate2D {
            CLLocationCoordinate2D(latitude: lat, longitude: lon)
        }
    }
    
    let id: String
    
    let name: String
    let position: Position
}

struct ContentView: View {
    
    @State private var selection: StationDetails? = nil
    
    let stations: [StationDetails]
    
    var body: some View {
        Map(selection: $selection) {
            ForEach(stations) { station in
                Marker(station.name, coordinate: station.position.coordinate)
                    .tag(station)
            }
        }
        .sheet(item: $selection) { station in
            NavigationStack {
                Text(station.name)
            }
            .presentationDetents([.medium])
        }
    }
}

#Preview {
    ContentView(stations: [
        StationDetails(id: UUID().uuidString, name: "Sydney", position: StationDetails.Position(lat: -33.8688, lon: 151.2093)),
        StationDetails(id: UUID().uuidString, name: "Melbourne", position: StationDetails.Position(lat: -37.8136, lon: 144.9631)),
        StationDetails(id: UUID().uuidString, name: "Perth", position: StationDetails.Position(lat: -31.9514, lon: 115.8617))
    ])
}