Implementing Temporary Row Highlighting how in iOS Settings with SwiftUI

If you are an iOS user and have ever tried to search for a feature in the settings by typing the name in the search bar, you might have noticed that when you jump to the page with the found feature, the row with the feature is highlighted for a few seconds. In this post, I’ll show a possible implementation for that.

First we create a page with a simple navigation link to jump to the page that contains the feature (in our case VPN).

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        NavigationStack {
            NavigationLink("Settings", destination: ListWithHighlightView(search: "VPN"))
        }
    }
}

Then define the struct option, with simple an id, name, and hi (it’s true if need to be higligthed).

struct Option: Identifiable {
    var id = UUID()
    var hi = false
    var name = ""
}

In the View we create a simple array with some options, show the list of options. When the list is displayed (the onAppear), simply check the name of the item to higlight, if it found, we higlight, than calling in the task a timer for one second, we remove the highligting.

struct ListWithHighlightView: View {
    @State var options = [Option(name: "Wi-fi"), Option( name:"VPN"), Option(name: "Sound")]
    @State var search = ""
    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            List {
                ForEach(0..<options.count) { index in
                    Text(options[index].name)
                    .listRowBackground(Color(options[index].hi ? UIColor.systemFill : UIColor.systemBackground))
                    .onAppear {
                        if search == options[index].name {
                            options[index].hi = true
                            Task {
                                try await Task.sleep(nanoseconds: 1_000_000_000)
                                options[index].hi = false
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

The listRowBackground define the background of the row, that in this case contains only a text.

Note: English is not my native language, so I apologize for any errors. I use AI solely to generate the banner of the post; the content is human-generated.