Native App Development: Creating An Interactive List
Learn more about my interactive list showcasing my favorite songs!
December 2025
Overview
For this assignment, I was challenged in creating an iOS app that was customized within SwiftUI, using Navigation bars, back buttons and modal views. The purpose of this assignment was not to build something super complex, but to control and redesign the navigation elements that typically come in SwiftUI.
Through the duration of this assignment, I created different views, built lists, connected views with navigation links and added a modal interface. These tasks helped strengthen not only my understanding of SwiftUI as a whole, but how to customize UIs deeper.
The Problem
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SwiftUI gives users a very simple navigation style. Navigation bars are pretty much identical across every project and the default back button has little to no visual “personality”. The challenge behind this assign =ment was learning how to change those defaults to something more stylish.
Another challenged I faced was ensuring that each view connected flawlessly to the next. The list I created had to link to another view and the back button had to be customized and still connect to the navigation.
The Solution
For this assignment, I started by creating a SwiftUI project and adding a listStyle to put my custom list. I decided to omit using an example from the textbook, and instead built my own list. With this list, i kept the data pretty light since the focus overall was the interface.
From there, I customized the nav bar title by adjusting the font color and overall look to create something different from the book example. I also linked my list items to another view so a back button would show up for the second view. I also customized this back button and made it an “X”.
Lastly, I created another view that was linked to the modal sheet. I made sure the modal view was clean, dismissible and connected correctly.
Results
Overall, I was happy with the end result. Even though this assignment wasn’t some “big” project, it helped me understand SwiftUI’s navigation customization options more. I was able to learn how to customize things people usually don’t pay much atention to and how views can work together seamlessly.
This assignment strengthened not only my technical skills but my confidence in using SwiftUI as well. I now feel prepared to take on any design challenge presented to me!
