SwiftUI vs UIKit in 2026: The Honest Truth After Building 27 Apps

I've been building iOS apps for 3 years now. Started with UIKit, switched to SwiftUI, went back to UIKit, and finally settled on... well, it depends. Here's my honest take after shipping 27 apps. The SwiftUI Honeymoon When SwiftUI dropped, I rewrote everything. Every. Single. App. struct ContentView : View { @State private var items : [ Item ] = [] var body : some View { NavigationStack { List ( items ) { item in ItemRow ( item : item ) } . navigationTitle ( "My App" ) . task { items = await fetchItems () } } } } Look at that. Clean. Declarative. Beautiful. Then I hit production. Where SwiftUI Still Falls Short (2026) 1. Complex Navigation NavigationStack is better than NavigationView, but deep linking and programmatic navigation still feel hacky: @Observable class Router { var path = NavigationPath () func navigate ( to destination : Destination ) { path . append ( destination ) } func popToRoot () { path = NavigationPath () } } Works... until you need to restore state after a crash.