How to Use an Enum with SwiftUI Picker

Enums are a natural fit for Picker views in SwiftUI. They’re structured, type-safe, and easy to loop through. In this guide, we’ll help you start with creating a SwiftUI Picker Enum while giving a heads-up of different protocols with examples for easier understanding.

Define an Enum for Your Options

Let’s say you want to select a notification sound. For this, we’ll create an enum that lists all available sound options:

enum NotificationSound {
    case chime
    case bell
    case echo
}

But to use this enum in a Picker, we need to do a bit more. SwiftUI’s Picker relies on looping and identifying values, and enums don’t support that out of the box. That’s where a few simple protocol conformances come in.

Why These Protocols Are Needed?

CaseIterable: Makes the Enum Loopable

The ForEach used inside a Picker needs something it can iterate over. Conforming your enum to CaseIterable automatically adds an allCases property containing every case.

enum NotificationSound: CaseIterable {
    case chime, bell, echo
}
// Now you can do:
NotificationSound.allCases // [.chime, .bell, .echo]

Identifiable: Makes Each Case Trackable

SwiftUI’s ForEach also needs to know how to uniquely identify each element — especially for UI updates. For enums without associated values, this is easy. Just conform to Identifiable and use the enum case itself as the id.

enum NotificationSound: CaseIterable, Identifiable {
    case chime, bell, echo
    var id: Self { self }
}

CustomStringConvertible: Makes the Label User-Friendly

By default, using Text(“\(value)”) in SwiftUI will print the raw case name like chime. To display something more readable, you can conform to CustomStringConvertible and provide a description:

enum NotificationSound: CaseIterable, Identifiable, CustomStringConvertible {
    case chime, bell, echo
    var id: Self { self }
    var description: String {
        switch self {
        case .chime: return "Chime"
        case .bell: return "Bell"
        case .echo: return "Echo"
        }
    }
}

Build the SwiftUI Picker View

With the enum fully set up, here’s how you create the Picker:

struct SoundPickerView: View {
    @State private var selectedSound: NotificationSound = .chime
    var body: some View {
        Picker("Notification Sound", selection: $selectedSound) {
            ForEach(NotificationSound.allCases) { sound in
                Text(sound.description).tag(sound)
            }
        }
        .pickerStyle(.wheel)
    }
}

This shows a scrollable list of enum cases, displays a readable label for each, and updates selectedSound as you make a choice.

Choosing the Right Picker Style

SwiftUI gives you flexibility in how your Picker is presented. The most common styles are:

• .wheel: Good for settings-style UIs, especially in compact layouts like iPhone.
• .segmented: Ideal for toggling between a small number of options. It replaces the Picker with a horizontal switcher.
• .menu: Offers a dropdown-like menu, useful when space is limited.

If you're working in a Form or inside a List, the default style might adapt to the container automatically. Testing styles in context helps you pick what’s most intuitive for your UI.