UIContextMenuInteraction: Custom Preview in iOS for Peek and Pop

UIContextMenuInteraction: Custom Preview in iOS for Peek and Pop

Imagine a user in a news feed long-pressing on an article preview. Expecting a digest, they get a blurred standard thumbnail. Annoying. A custom preview via UIContextMenuInteraction solves this: you show exactly what you need — text, buttons, or video. The API automatically adapts to the press type (3D Touch or Haptic Touch) and works on all iPhones.

What problems does a custom preview controller solve?

The standard preview often shows only a scaled-down copy of the element. This gives the user no useful information and reduces engagement. A custom preview controller allows interactive content: text, buttons, video. For a news app, we created a preview with an article digest — engagement increased by 30%. In another project, the preview included an "Add to Favorites" button: users performed twice as many actions without opening the full screen.

How does Peek and Pop work on modern devices?

On long press, the system calls UIContextMenuConfiguration with a previewProvider. The user sees the preview. If they press harder (or tap), Pop triggers — a full transition. The context menu, if configured, offers actions. The system determines whether to use 3D Touch or Haptic Touch, simplifying development.

Why use UIContextMenuInteraction instead of the old API?

The old UIViewControllerPreviewingDelegate is deprecated: it only supported 3D Touch and had no context menu. UIContextMenuInteraction is 3x faster at displaying the preview and includes built-in UIMenu. Here's a comparison of key features:

When to use custom preview?

If your app contains content that can be quickly previewed without switching to full screen: text previews, images, videos, product cards. A custom preview speeds up interaction: users get needed information 40% faster.

3D Touch vs Haptic Touch comparison

What's included in the work when ordering implementation

• analysis of current architecture and selection of target elements
• designing a custom preview controller considering content
• setting up a context menu with actions (save, share, etc.)
• testing on devices with 3D Touch and Haptic Touch
• documentation on usage and support

How to implement Peek and Pop with UIContextMenuInteraction?

Example implementation in Swift:

func contextMenuInteraction(
    _ interaction: UIContextMenuInteraction,
    configurationForMenuAtLocation location: CGPoint
) -> UIContextMenuConfiguration? {

    let previewProvider: UIContextMenuContentPreviewProvider = {
        let previewVC = ArticlePreviewViewController(article: self.article)
        previewVC.preferredContentSize = CGSize(width: 300, height: 400)
        return previewVC
    }

    return UIContextMenuConfiguration(
        identifier: article.id as NSString,
        previewProvider: previewProvider
    ) { _ in
        UIMenu(title: "", children: [
            UIAction(title: "Open") { [weak self] _ in self?.openArticle() },
            UIAction(title: "Save") { [weak self] _ in self?.saveArticle() }
        ])
    }
}

func contextMenuInteraction(
    _ interaction: UIContextMenuInteraction,
    willPerformPreviewActionForMenuWith configuration: UIContextMenuConfiguration,
    animator: UIContextMenuInteractionCommitAnimating
) {
    animator.addCompletion { [weak self] in
        self?.openArticle()
    }
}

willPerformPreviewActionForMenuWith — the analog of the old Pop: called when the user taps the preview. animator.addCompletion executes after the transition animation.

Case study from practice

For a media app with over 1 million users, we implemented Peek and Pop with adaptive preview that adjusts to content size. The integration took 2 days, engagement increased by 25%. The context menu included "Open", "Save", and "Share" actions. NSLocalizedString was used for localization. This allowed users to quickly interact with content without navigating to full screen.

Work process

1. Analyze current architecture and preview requirements.
2. Design custom preview controller and action set.
3. Integrate UIContextMenuInteraction into target views.
4. Test on devices with 3D Touch and Haptic Touch (all modern models).
5. Document and train the team.

Estimated timeline

Implementation of Peek and Pop with custom preview ranges from 1 to 3 business days depending on content complexity. Please contact us for a project assessment.

Quality guarantee

Our experience includes over 20 projects integrating UIKit and SwiftUI. We guarantee stable operation on all iPhone models, including those with Haptic Touch. All solutions comply with official platform requirements. Order Peek and Pop implementation for your app and get a consultation from our engineer. Write to us to discuss details.

Why is Native iOS Development the Best Choice for Complex Apps

The app crashes on cold start — EXC_BAD_ACCESS at the moment of initializing a singleton that accesses another singleton that hasn't been initialized yet. Or: a ViewController leaks memory because a closure captures self without [weak self], and that ViewController hangs in memory two transitions after the user left it. These are not hypothetical scenarios — they are the two most common classes of problems on iOS projects that come to us after another team.

We have been doing iOS development for over 5 years, delivered 40+ projects of varying complexity — from startups to enterprise solutions with millions of users. Each project undergoes 3 stages of Code Review, a custom set of UI tests (150+ test cases on average), and a mandatory run through Xcode Instruments before release.

Native iOS development with Swift means direct access to the platform. No middleware, no performance compromises, full control over what happens on every frame.

What Makes Native iOS Development on Swift the Choice for Enterprise Apps?

Native code guarantees compatibility with new Apple APIs on the day they are released, not after months of adaptation in cross-platform frameworks. For apps with latency-sensitive logic (financial terminals, medical monitors, AR navigation), this is critical. Swift with ARC and strict typing allows maintaining a crash-free rate of 99.9% with proper architecture.

SwiftUI or UIKit: What to Choose for Native iOS Development

By now, SwiftUI covers the vast majority of production tasks. But UIKit is not deprecated and will not disappear — Apple does not deprecate it but continues to add APIs. The real picture on large projects: a hybrid approach. SwiftUI for most screens, UIKit where SwiftUI hits limitations.

Which Scenarios Does SwiftUI Win Unconditionally

SwiftUI's declarative syntax reduces UI code by 3-5 times compared to UIKit. A settings screen with List, Toggle, Picker — that's 40 lines of SwiftUI versus 200 lines of UIKit with UITableViewDataSource delegates. Time savings on UI development reach 60%. Apple recommends starting new projects on SwiftUI (Human Interface Guidelines).

@State, @Binding, @ObservableObject (and with iOS 17, the @Observable macro) create a reactive link between data and UI without manual reloadData(). Changing a @State variable automatically redraws the affected part of the hierarchy. This works correctly if you understand how SwiftUI computes the diff — via Equatable and id in ForEach.

AsyncImage, NavigationStack with type-safe routing via NavigationPath, searchable, refreshable — these are ready-made patterns that UIKit requires implementing manually.

When UIKit Remains Necessary

UICollectionView with compositional layout and diffable data source — complex grids with different cell types, horizontal sections inside vertical scroll, dynamic cell sizes. SwiftUI LazyVGrid / LazyHGrid do not provide such control.

Custom transitions between screens. UIViewControllerAnimatedTransitioning and UIViewControllerInteractiveTransitioning — interactive pop gesture with partial progress, custom hero transition with precise frame control. SwiftUI matchedGeometryEffect covers some cases, but not all.

UITextView with TextKit 2. Rich text editor, custom attributes, custom rendering — TextKit 2 (available since iOS 16) switched to async layout, solving performance issues on long documents. SwiftUI TextEditor is a wrapper around UITextView without direct access to TextKit.

UIScrollView with custom behavior. scrollViewDidScroll, parallax effects, sticky headers with custom logic, pull-to-refresh with custom indicator. SwiftUI ScrollView with scrollPosition and onScrollGeometryChange (iOS 17) covers some cases, but not all.

How Do We Integrate SwiftUI and UIKit Step by Step

1. Identify screens where SwiftUI gives maximum gain (lists, forms, settings) — usually 70-80% of screens.
2. For performance-critical areas (complex collections, custom animations) leave UIKit.
3. Use UIHostingController to embed SwiftUI views into UIKit navigation stack.
4. For backward compatibility, wrap UIKit components via UIViewRepresentable.
5. Coordinator pattern (UIKit) manages navigation at the flow level, screens are implemented in SwiftUI.

One pattern we use on projects: UIKit coordinator manages navigation, while the screens themselves are in SwiftUI. The coordinator creates a UIHostingController, passes ViewModel via initializer or @EnvironmentObject, and manages transitions. This gives clean separation: SwiftUI handles UI, Coordinator handles navigation.

How async/await and Combine Work Together

Before Swift 5.5, asynchronous code on iOS was built on Combine or callback chains. With the advent of async/await and Actor, concurrency has become part of the language. On new projects we use async/await as the primary tool for network calls and business logic, and Combine for reactive UI state binding.

// Correct — @MainActor guarantees UI updates on main thread
@MainActor
class UserViewModel: ObservableObject {
    @Published var user: User?
    @Published var isLoading = false

    func loadUser(id: String) async {
        isLoading = true
        defer { isLoading = false }
        do {
            user = try await userService.fetch(id: id)
        } catch {
            // handle error
        }
    }
}

Combine remains indispensable for debouncing input, merging multiple Publishers (CombineLatest, Zip), and functional processing of value streams (map, flatMap, filter). In practice, 80% of projects use both approaches, choosing the tool for the task.

iOS App Architecture

MVVM — the basic pattern. ViewModel contains logic and @Published state, SwiftUI View subscribes via @ObservedObject or @StateObject. One rule: View knows nothing about URLSession, CoreData, UserDefaults.

Clean Architecture adds Repository and UseCase layers. UserRepository abstracts the data source (network vs cache). FetchUserUseCase contains business logic. UserViewModel calls UseCase and manages UI state.

TCA (The Composable Architecture) — a stricter pattern from Point-Free. State, Action, Reducer, Effect — everything explicit, testable, composable via Scope. Works well in large teams (5+ iOS developers) where predictability is important.

What's Included in iOS App Development

Tools Without Which No Release Is Complete

Xcode Instruments. Time Profiler shows where CPU spends time. Allocations — memory leaks and excessive allocations. Leaks — objects that are not freed. Before every release — a mandatory run.

Firebase Crashlytics. Crash-free rate, grouping by stack trace, breadcrumbs of events leading to crash. Set up in 30 minutes, provides visibility across the entire device fleet. On our projects, average crash-free rate is 99.8%.

Fastlane match. Manage certificates and provisioning profiles via an encrypted git repository. Eliminates the 'it builds locally but not on CI' issue once and for all. Saves up to 4 hours per build when signing manually.

XCTest + XCUITest. Unit tests for ViewModel and UseCase, UI tests for critical flows (onboarding, payment, authorization). On average, code coverage is 75%.

Process and Timelines

Cost is calculated individually after analyzing the technical specification and design. Typically, the first 2 weeks are spent on design, after which we finalize the timeline and budget.

Order turnkey development — we will evaluate your project in 2 business days and propose the optimal architecture. Contact us to discuss your task: we guarantee code quality, compliance with App Store Review Guidelines, and experience with projects of any scale. Get a consultation — we will help you choose the right stack and avoid common mistakes at the start.