Understanding SwiftUI Navigation Stack

Navigation in SwiftUI – The Modern Way

Since iOS 16, SwiftUI offers NavigationStack as a much more flexible alternative to NavigationView. Here's how to work with it.

NavigationStack Basics

The simplest approach:

NavigationStack {
    List(items) { item in
        NavigationLink(item.name, value: item)
    }
    .navigationDestination(for: Item.self) { item in
        DetailView(item: item)
    }
}

The big advantage over the old NavigationLink(destination:): Navigation is data-driven instead of view-driven.

NavigationPath for Programmatic Navigation

With NavigationPath you can programmatically control the navigation stack:

@State private var path = NavigationPath()
NavigationStack(path: $path) {
    Button("Go to Detail") {
        path.append(myItem)
    }
    .navigationDestination(for: Item.self) { item in
        DetailView(item: item)
    }
}

This enables:

• Deep Linking – Navigate directly to a specific screen
• Pop to Root – Go back to the start with path.removeLast(path.count)
• State Restoration – NavigationPath is Codable

Multiple Destination Types

You can register different data types as navigation destinations:

NavigationStack(path: $path) {
    ContentView()
        .navigationDestination(for: User.self) { user in
            UserView(user: user)
        }
        .navigationDestination(for: Settings.self) { settings in
            SettingsView(settings: settings)
        }
}

Conclusion

NavigationStack is the right approach for new SwiftUI projects. Data-driven navigation makes code cleaner and enables features like deep linking without much effort.