Is it possible programmatically move focus to a button? By "focus," I mean the border around an element when Full Keyboard Access is enabled.

For example, in the following code, I expect the focus to move to Button2 when clicking "Move focus to Button2," but it doesn't seem to work:

struct ContentView: View {
    
    @FocusState private var focusedElement: FocusableElement?
    
    enum FocusableElement: Hashable {
        case button
    }
    
    var body: some View {
        VStack{
            VStack {
                Button("Move focus to Button2") {
                    focusedElement = .button
                }
                
                Button("Button2") {}
                    .focused($focusedElement, equals: .button)
            }
        }
    }
}

I would expect:

Is it possible programmatically move focus to a button? By "focus," I mean the border around an element when Full Keyboard Access is enabled.

For example, in the following code, I expect the focus to move to Button2 when clicking "Move focus to Button2," but it doesn't seem to work:

struct ContentView: View {
    
    @FocusState private var focusedElement: FocusableElement?
    
    enum FocusableElement: Hashable {
        case button
    }
    
    var body: some View {
        VStack{
            VStack {
                Button("Move focus to Button2") {
                    focusedElement = .button
                }
                
                Button("Button2") {}
                    .focused($focusedElement, equals: .button)
            }
        }
    }
}

I would expect:

• ios
• swift
• swiftui

• A button doesn't inherently have "Focus". You need to use accessibility focus for this to work, alternatively you can perform a hack by making the buttons a "TextField" but eww. – xTwisteDx Commented Mar 10 at 14:58

2 Answers 2

The focusedElement seems to change for me on iOS18, tested on real device. Try this approach using .focusable() and a .border to show the button change of focus in red.

struct ContentView: View {
    @FocusState private var focusedElement: FocusableElement?
    
    enum FocusableElement: Hashable {
        case button
    }
    
    var body: some View {
        VStack (spacing: 55) {
            Button("Move focus to Button2") {
                focusedElement = .button
            }
            .border(focusedElement == .button ? Color.clear : Color.red, width: 4)
            
            Button("Button2") {
                focusedElement = nil
            }
            .focusable()
            .focused($focusedElement, equals: .button)
            .border(focusedElement == .button ? Color.red : Color.clear, width: 4)
        }
    }
}

Another example:

struct ContentView: View {
    @FocusState private var focusedElement: FocusableElement?
    
    enum FocusableElement: Hashable {
        case button1
        case button2
    }
    
    var body: some View {
        VStack (spacing: 55) {
            Button("Move focus to Button2") {
                focusedElement = .button2
            }
            .focusable()
            .focused($focusedElement, equals: .button1)
            .border(focusedElement == .button1 ? Color.red : Color.clear, width: 4)
            
            Button("Move focus to Button1") {
                focusedElement = .button1
            }
            .focusable()
            .focused($focusedElement, equals: .button2)
            .border(focusedElement == .button2 ? Color.red : Color.clear, width: 4)
        }
    }
}

In theory you should be able to add an @AccessibilityFocusState enum to your view, and then binding various enum values to different views using the accessibilityFocused ViewModifier.

I say "in theory" because as far as I can tell this feature of SwiftUI is broken for Full keyboard access. It just doesn't work.

I posted a thread here on SO when I first started trying to get this to work. I've since talked with other iOS devs who have had the same problem.