Dismissing the keyboard in SwiftUI

Lazar Nikolov

The Problem

There are cases where we want to manually dismiss the iOS keyboard, either by tapping on a certain button, or after submitting a form. Tapping away from the focused element will not dismiss the keyboard by default.

The Solution

To achieve that, there is a nifty utility function that you can create in your project. Create a KeyboardUtils.swift file within your project and paste the following code:

import UIKit

func hideKeyboard() {
    UIApplication.shared.sendAction(#selector(UIResponder.resignFirstResponder), to: nil, from: nil, for: nil)
}
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The function sends a resignFirstResponder action to the shared UIApplication, which makes any selected element let go of the focus and dismiss the keyboard.

We can use this function in a form handler:

func handleCreate() {
    // ...
    // send create API call
    // ...

    // clear the form fields
    self.amount = ""
    self.date = Date()
    self.note = ""

    // dismiss the keyboard
    hideKeyboard()
}
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Or we can even create a toolbar with a keyboard dismiss button that’ll be present on top of our keyboard:

// create a toolbar at the root of our form
.toolbar {
    // set the placement of the toolbard to the keyboard
    ToolbarItemGroup(placement: .keyboard) {
        Spacer()
        // create a keyboard dismiss button
        Button {
            // dismiss the keyboard on press
            hideKeyboard()
        } label: {
            Label("Dismiss", systemImage: "keyboard.chevron.compact.down")
        }
    }
}
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