Why SwiftUI Smart Capture changes everything for mobile PMs

SwiftUI—Apple’s framework for building user interfaces across Apple platforms like iOS—has redefined how teams build apps by letting developers describe their interface while the system handles the implementation. 

It’s extremely powerful. But SwiftUI’s framework has also made tracking analytics far more complex.

Analytics tools struggle to track what happens when someone uses a mobile app built with SwiftUI, so these tools can’t collect accurate data. And without accurate data, every decision becomes a guessing game.

Luckily, Contentsquare’s Smart Capture automatically records every user interaction in SwiftUI so you can collect comprehensive, up-to-date data. 

Today, we break down SwiftUI and Smart Capture so you know how they work together and what you need to get started.

Key insights

• Autocapture is when analytics tools automatically capture every user interaction on a website or app. SwiftUI’s framework often makes autocapture difficult, forcing teams to resort to manual tracking for mobile experience monitoring.

• Manual tracking is tedious, challenging, and unscalable with SwiftUI. When every new feature demands developer time to update tracking, product teams lose momentum, and experimentation suffers. 

• Contentsquare’s autocapture, Smart Capture, works in SwiftUI and offers product teams a competitive advantage. Teams that can easily measure user interactions can run faster tests and iterations, and quickly ship features users will love. 

• When analytics is automated, engineers can focus on building, and product teams can focus on shaping strategy. Cross-collaboration improves apps and leads to happier users. 

Why is autocapture difficult with SwiftUI?

SwiftUI uses a declarative programming model where developers describe what the UI should look like, and the framework builds it. 

That means instead of giving step-by-step instructions like in UIKit (an imperative Apple framework for building app interfaces), SwiftUI allows developers to describe the desired user interface, while the system figures out how to implement it. Think of it like giving someone your address and letting GPS find the route, rather than providing turn-by-turn directions. 

While SwiftUI’s declarative process makes UI development faster, it also gives teams 3 main challenges when it comes to autocapturing analytics:

1. Shifting hierarchy

In traditional frameworks like UIKit, an app’s layout is straightforward. Every button, label, and screen belongs to a clear hierarchy, and you can trace each one without confusion. 

SwiftUI takes a different path. Because it is declarative, the hierarchy shifts depending on the state of the app and each user interaction, and is often hidden from view. It feels like exploring a house where rooms appear and disappear depending on who walks in. 

That dynamic structure makes autocapture difficult, and analytics tools struggle to consistently tag every interaction in real time. 

2. Dynamic rendering and hidden elements

SwiftUI optimizes performance by rendering only what it needs, when it needs it. 

While this makes apps faster and more efficient, it makes autocapture feel like trying to photograph a shape-shifter: the thing you’re trying to capture keeps changing form.

3. No direct access to UI elements

With UIKit, analytics tools had ‘clear handles’—direct object references like buttons and labels— that they could use to identify and track elements. 

SwiftUI hides much of that detail, and without those reference points, autocapture tools often lose the ability to collect complete data.

Drawbacks of not using autocapture with SwiftUI

Because autocapture is typically difficult to implement with SwiftUI, teams often turn to manual tracking instead, which can introduce several challenges:

1. Slower insight: product managers rely on engineering to set up manual tracking, which can cause delays of weeks or months in understanding feature impact

2. Data gaps: manual tracking results in incomplete datasets, as teams can’t predict all the metrics they need prior to set-up. For example, a critical button in a checkout flow may go untracked if it's overlooked early on—hiding potentially valuable information on conversion issues.

3. Engineering overhead: time spent on manual tracking takes away from engineering resources needed for new features

4. Reduced experimentation: high costs of measuring analytics make product teams hesitant to experiment and test new ideas

5. Inaccurate journeys: being unable to see which screens users visit makes it nearly impossible to develop accurate customer journey maps for mobile apps. And when you can’t glimpse into how people use your app, you can’t identify friction points, optimize key flows, or validate whether new features are actually improving the user experience. 

So, what’s the solution for teams who want to implement autocapture to track user behavior on mobile devices?

How Contentsquare lets teams autocapture data in SwiftUI

Contentsquare’s Smart Capture on mobile automatically tracks all user interactions (like taps, swipes, screens, etc.) on apps built with SwiftUI—no manual tagging required.

How? Smart Capture recognizes patterns in how people use the app and captures user interactions rather than relying only on code. This means your team still gets quality, comprehensive data that other autocapture analytics tools might miss.

Teams can also combine Smart Capture with manual tracking to track specific actions.

Benefits of using Smart Capture in SwiftUI for product teams

Smart Capture in SwiftUI gives product teams a complete picture of how people use their apps.

Instead of relying on engineers to build custom tracking codes, you get answers to questions like

• Which features are driving retention?

• Where are users dropping off during onboarding?

• Which screens are influencing conversions?

Capturing every interaction automatically gives you real visibility across the entire user journey so your team can validate hypotheses and make changes with confidence. 

Even better, Smart Capture in SwiftUI gives you the answers to questions you didn’t have. For example, say you decide to track screen views and conversion rates. But after a few months, you realize you also want to track scroll depth on key screens.

With manual tracking, you’d need to wait on engineers to build scroll depth tracking, and you’d only see data from that point forward. But Smart Capture tracks every interaction so you can access retroactive data at any time. 

🔥 Contentsquare’s Data Connect lets you automatically export your insights to your data warehouse.

Streamline your data collection and keep all your insights in one place so your entire organization can access useful data when they need it.

SwiftUI Smart Capture is now available in Contentsquare

Contentsquare’s SwiftUI Smart Capture provides product managers with the mobile analytics they need without requiring additional engineering work, so product teams can move faster, test ideas freely, and base decisions on data rather than manual setup.

Smart Capture unlocks the full potential of SwiftUI apps while preserving the insights you rely on. This is the future of mobile analytics: declarative, automatic, and built to transform the way you make product decisions.

FAQs about Smart Capture in SwiftUI