swiftui-sheet-keyboard-animations

SwiftUI Sheet + Keyboard Choreography

Present a sheet with the keyboard rising as one motion (iMessage-compose style), and dismiss them together — in pure-ish SwiftUI.

Why naive approaches fail (all observed, not hypothetical)

Attempt	What actually happens
draftFocused = true after a delay (300–500ms)	Works, but visibly staggered: sheet settles, THEN keyboard pops and re-lifts the input bar — an up-then-down bounce
draftFocused = true immediately in .task/.onAppear	@FocusState cannot co-animate with a presentation; worse, at bind time the field may not be mounted, so focus fails silently — no keyboard at all
Any auto-focus on a .medium detent sheet	The keyboard SHOVES the medium sheet to full height (Apple Forums #743274): the input bar travels sheet-distance + keyboard-height and settles back — the big ride
Retiring the prewarm field when you attempt the handoff	If focus didn't land yet, unmounting the prewarm resigns first responder and the keyboard drops mid-presentation

The pattern (4 pieces, all required)

1. UIKit prewarm field — a near-invisible UITextField that calls becomeFirstResponder() in didMoveToWindow. UIKit can grab the keyboard during a presentation transition, so the keyboard rises with the sheet. (Pattern origin: github.com/naan/FocusOnAppear.)
2. Land-gated handoff — after the sheet content mounts (~400ms is safe; the keyboard is already visibly up so the wait is invisible), set the real field's @FocusState. Retire the prewarm only when focus actually lands (onChange(of: focused)), never on the attempt.
3. Open at .large — never auto-focus on a .medium detent. If the sheet has a detent-selection binding, reset it to .large for the next open.
4. Freeze bottom accessories from frame one — anything that collapses when focus lands (emote strips, suggestion rows) must render collapsed from the first frame during auto-open, or its height change adds another bar jump mid-rise.

Exit symmetry: an explicit close control clears focus and dismisses in the same transaction (focused = false; onClose()); sheet drag-dismiss already pulls the keyboard along natively.

Skeleton

Complete adaptable implementation in references/implementation.md — the prewarm representable, state wiring, handoff task, and accessory gating, extracted from a shipped app.

Red flags

• A bare Task.sleep before focused = true with no prewarm → you have the gap
• autoFocusPending = false (or prewarm unmount) in the same statement as the focus attempt → keyboard will drop when the attempt races the mount
• presentationDetents([.medium, .large]) on an auto-focusing sheet without forcing .large at open → overshoot