Display and manipulate PDF documents in your applications using PDFKit.

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Issue with page.selectionForWord(at:) in Mac Designed for iPad Mode
I’m encountering an issue with the page.selectionForWord(at:) method in my application. This method has stopped working in Mac Designed for iPad mode. The functionality works fine on physical devices such as iPhone and iPad, as well as on Mac, but in this specific mode, the method no longer works, and the application crashes. It is crucial for me that this functionality works in Mac Designed for iPad mode, as rewriting the entire code for Mac would be too time-consuming, especially considering the size of the application. Interestingly, a similar method, page.selectionForLine(at:), works perfectly with the same parameters in all environments, including the Mac Designed for iPad mode. This makes the issue even more puzzling. The issue began after the latest update. The app no longer responds to the page.selectionForWord(at:) method, which causes the application to crash. I have attached a test app to reproduce the error.
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391
Dec ’24
PDFKit - beginFindString
I am creating an iOS app that needs to parse the text from a PDF document. I can read the entire PDF document's text using the string property, but if it's a large PDF document, this could cause delays for users. From the documentation, I came across the beginFindString function, which seems to asynchronously, with no return? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/pdfkit/pdfdocument/beginfindstring(_:withoptions:)) Unfortunately I cannot find examples on how to use this function or its intended purpose/functionality, so any guidance would be appreciated. My goal is to read the PDF document one line at a time, searching for newlines ('\n'), then parsing that line as needed. I'm hoping the beginFindString function will be useful.
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316
Jan ’25
The PKCanvasView Created by PDFPageOverlayViewProvider cannot work normally
By setting the PKCanvasView background color to blue, I can tell that the PKCanvasView for each PDFPage is created normally, but it does not respond to touch. Specifically, whether it is finger or applepencil, all the responses of the page occur from PDFView(such as zoom and scroll), and PKCanvasView can not draw, please how to solve? class PDFAnnotatableViewController: UIViewController, PDFViewDelegate { private let pdfView = PDFView() private var pdfDocument: PDFDocument? let file: FileItem private var userSettings: UserSettings @Binding var selectedPage: Int @Binding var currentMode: Mode @Binding var latestPdfChatResponse: LatestPDFChatResponse @State private var pdfPageCoordinator = PDFPageCoordinator() @ObservedObject var userMessage: ChatMessage init(file: FileItem, userSettings: UserSettings, drawDataList: Binding<[DrawDataItem]>, selectedPage: Binding<Int>, currentMode: Binding<Mode>, latestPdfChatResponse: Binding<LatestPDFChatResponse>, userMessage: ChatMessage) { self.file = file self.userSettings = userSettings self._selectedPage = selectedPage self._currentMode = currentMode self._latestPdfChatResponse = latestPdfChatResponse self.userMessage = userMessage super.init(nibName: nil, bundle: nil) DispatchQueue.global(qos: .userInitiated).async { if let document = PDFDocument(url: file.pdfLocalUrl) { DispatchQueue.main.async { self.pdfDocument = document self.pdfView.document = document self.goToPage(selectedPage: selectedPage.wrappedValue - 1) } } } } required init?(coder: NSCoder) { fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented") } override func viewDidLoad() { super.viewDidLoad() setupPDFView() } private func setupPDFView() { pdfView.delegate = self pdfView.autoScales = true pdfView.displayMode = .singlePage pdfView.displayDirection = .vertical pdfView.backgroundColor = .white pdfView.usePageViewController(true) pdfView.displaysPageBreaks = false pdfView.displaysAsBook = false pdfView.minScaleFactor = 0.8 pdfView.maxScaleFactor = 3.5 pdfView.pageOverlayViewProvider = pdfPageCoordinator if let document = pdfDocument { pdfView.document = document goToPage(selectedPage: selectedPage) } pdfView.frame = view.bounds pdfView.autoresizingMask = [.flexibleWidth, .flexibleHeight] view.addSubview(pdfView) NotificationCenter.default.addObserver( self, selector: #selector(handlePageChange), name: .PDFViewPageChanged, object: pdfView ) } // Dealing with page turning @objc private func handlePageChange(notification: Notification) { guard let currentPage = pdfView.currentPage, let document = pdfView.document else { return } let currentPageIndex = document.index(for: currentPage) if currentPageIndex != selectedPage - 1 { DispatchQueue.main.async { self.selectedPage = currentPageIndex + 1 } } } func goToPage(selectedPage: Int) { guard let document = pdfView.document else { return } if let page = document.page(at: selectedPage) { pdfView.go(to: page) } } // Switch function func togglecurrentMode(currentMode: Mode){ DispatchQueue.main.async { if self.currentMode == .none{ self.pdfView.usePageViewController(true) self.pdfView.isUserInteractionEnabled = true } else if self.currentMode == .annotation { if let page = self.pdfView.currentPage { if let canvasView = self.pdfPageCoordinator.getCanvasView(forPage: page) { canvasView.isUserInteractionEnabled = true canvasView.tool = PKInkingTool(.pen, color: .red, width: 20) canvasView.drawingPolicy = .anyInput canvasView.setNeedsDisplay() } } } } } } class MyPDFPage: PDFPage { var drawing: PKDrawing? func setDrawing(_ drawing: PKDrawing) { self.drawing = drawing } func getDrawing() -> PKDrawing? { return self.drawing } } class PDFPageCoordinator: NSObject, PDFPageOverlayViewProvider { var pageToViewMapping = [PDFPage: PKCanvasView]() func pdfView(_ view: PDFView, overlayViewFor page: PDFPage) -> UIView? { var resultView: PKCanvasView? = nil if let overlayView = pageToViewMapping[page] { resultView = overlayView } else { let canvasView = PKCanvasView(frame: view.bounds) canvasView.drawingPolicy = .anyInput canvasView.tool = PKInkingTool(.pen, color: .systemYellow, width: 20) canvasView.backgroundColor = .blue pageToViewMapping[page] = canvasView resultView = canvasView } if let page = page as? MyPDFPage, let drawing = page.drawing { resultView?.drawing = drawing } return resultView } func pdfView(_ pdfView: PDFView, willEndDisplayingOverlayView overlayView: UIView, for page: PDFPage) { guard let overlayView = overlayView as? PKCanvasView, let page = page as? MyPDFPage else { return } page.drawing = overlayView.drawing pageToViewMapping.removeValue(forKey: page) } func savePDFDocument(_ pdfDocument: PDFDocument) -> Data { for i in 0..<pdfDocument.pageCount { if let page = pdfDocument.page(at: i) as? MyPDFPage, let drawing = page.drawing { let newAnnotation = PDFAnnotation(bounds: drawing.bounds, forType: .stamp, withProperties: nil) let codedData = try! NSKeyedArchiver.archivedData(withRootObject: drawing, requiringSecureCoding: true) newAnnotation.setValue(codedData, forAnnotationKey: PDFAnnotationKey(rawValue: "drawingData")) page.addAnnotation(newAnnotation) } } let options = [PDFDocumentWriteOption.burnInAnnotationsOption: true] if let resultData = pdfDocument.dataRepresentation(options: options) { return resultData } return Data() } func getCanvasView(forPage page: PDFPage) -> PKCanvasView? { return pageToViewMapping[page] } } Is there an error in my code? Please tell me how to make PKCanvasView painting normally?
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392
Aug ’25
Push Button captions not properly written to PDF document using PDFKit
The Problem Push buttons (created as a PDFAnnotation using PDFKit) do not properly write the associated caption's key-value pair (within the annotation's appearance characteristics dictionary) to a PDF document. What is Happening Push button widget annotations can have a caption that is displayed as the button’s label. In the PDF 1.7 specification (ISO PDF32000-2008, s. 12.5.6.19), a widget annotation can have an ‘appearance characteristics dictionary’ (MK) with properties to construct the appearance of the widget. The caption property (CA) is used to construct a button’s caption/label. PDFKit uses the PDFAnnotation .caption property to set the value of a push button’s caption as a string. Observation 1: In an open PDF document (using PDFView), a push button widget annotation can be created and added to a PDFPage using the following code: let pushButton = PDFAnnotation(bounds: pushButtonBounds, forType: .widget, withProperties: nil) pushButton.widgetFieldType = .button pushButton.widgetControlType = .pushButtonControl pushButton.caption = "My Button" page.addAnnotation(pushButton) The PDFAnnotation .caption property is used to set the caption to the required string. As a result, the push button is correctly displayed on the PDFPage with the correct label being display on the button. While the PDF document remains open, the appearance characteristics dictionary (an PDFAppearanceCharacteristics object) retains a key-value pair for the caption with the correct value as expected. On saving/writing to the PDF file, however, the key-value pair for the caption in the appearance characteristics dictionary is not written to the PDF document’s file. Resulting PDF markup: 6 0 obj << /Rect [ 256 299.8977 356 399.8977 ] /Border [ 0 0 0 ] /T (button23) /F 4 /Subtype /Widget /DA (/.AppleSystemUIFont 13 Tf 0 g) /MK 8 0 R /C [ 0 ] /AP 9 0 R /V /Off /M (D:20250330154918Z00'00') /FT /Btn /Type /Annot /Ff 65536 >> endobj 9 0 obj << /N 10 0 R >> endobj 8 0 obj << /BG [ 0.75 ] >> endobj 10 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Type /XObject /Subtype /Form /FormType 1 /BBox [0 0 100 100] /Resources 11 0 R /Length 170 >> stream x }ê1 Ç0 Öw~≈ ahÈ KÈ q1q0\‚`ú Ÿ¿ 8¯Ôm% u0óª‰.Ô{yπ åP°H-}ª‡à y3 ¸ %≠¡‰ %› g¨$•µMVXø‡Hé†Ö ”î“¿˜® BI•L ˆ†b A pü‰Ã @ÓpB∫ †æœs ãÙ:d8Éwÿr»/}” €∂I÷Bõ B;'+gm Ô˝„ mÙ~ L*>• endstream endobj On closing the PDF document, the assigned value for the push button’s caption is not written to the file and is lost. Observation 2: On reopening the PDF document, and assigning a new value for the already-created push button’s caption, a key-value pair for the caption is again correctly added to the PDFAnnotation appearance characteristics dictionary. On saving/writing to the PDF file, this time, the caption key-value pair in the appearance characteristics dictionary is correctly written/saved to the PDF document file. Resulting PDF markup: 6 0 obj << /Border [ 0 0 0 ] /Rect [ 256 299.8977 356 399.8977 ] /T (button23) /F 4 /BS 8 0 R /Subtype /Widget /DA (/.AppleSystemUIFont 13 Tf 0 g) /MK 9 0 R /C [ 0 ] /AP 10 0 R /V /Off /M (D:20250330154918Z00'00') /FT /Btn /Type /Annot /Ff 65536 >> endobj 10 0 obj << /N 11 0 R >> endobj 9 0 obj << /BG [ 0.75 ] /CA (My Button) >> endobj 8 0 obj << /W 0 >> endobj 11 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Type /XObject /Subtype /Form /FormType 1 /BBox [0 0 100 100] /Resources 12 0 R /Length 163 >> stream x uè1 ¬@ Ö˜˛ä7∂√]ì´◊Î≠ ¡A 8à”a∑Vj·ø˜jë™ !ÅÑ|y/=ˆËA1òʺ]pDá|=0¬“Œb ø+Õ gùf2E≤∞Ê≈N` û·Xm©-BãZ†H Ÿ ¿≈ºPÄ= Ø míãp •¡ ÈÓÅ˙>é “kó· Ÿb#—¬ Ûã¶2∂Ñ2fiΠ;óDÌiÓ?ü>LÁûÊy;} endstream endobj Impact on User Experience: Push button captions may not be properly saved to the PDF document’s file. This may result in an application redrawing a push button without a caption/label. More so, an application that uses the caption value to “read” a button’s label (e.g., for accessibility purposes) will not be able to do so.
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56
Apr ’25
PDF opening from iOS Unity app in landscape mode instead of portrait
In our Unity App for iOS build, when we opened the PDF from the app, it is automatically opening in landspace mode instead of portrait. In the android and windows apps, we are able to open in the portrait mode. We tried to make the changes in the project settings but it did not change. Any way in which we can acheive this would be helpful for us.
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39
Apr ’25
CanvasView overlay on PDFKit loses quality when zoomed – how to preserve drawing resolution?
Hi all, I’m currently building a SwiftUI app that overlays a PKCanvasView onto each page of a PDFView using PDFPageOverlayViewProvider. It works well at the initial scale, but once I zoom into the PDF, the drawings on the PKCanvasView appear blurry or pixelated, even though the PDF itself remains crisp. I’m trying to adjust canvasView.contentScaleFactor relative to pdfView.scaleFactor to preserve the drawing quality. Here’s a simplified version of the relevant code: import SwiftUI import PDFKit import PencilKit struct ContentView: View { var body: some View { if let url = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "sample", withExtension: "pdf"), let data = try? Data(contentsOf: url), let document = PDFDocument(data: data) { PDFRepresentableView(document: document) } else { Text("") } } } #Preview { ContentView() } struct PDFRepresentableView: UIViewRepresentable { let document: PDFDocument let pdfView = PDFView() func makeUIView(context: Context) -> PDFView { pdfView.displayMode = .singlePageContinuous pdfView.usePageViewController(false) pdfView.displayDirection = .vertical pdfView.pageOverlayViewProvider = context.coordinator pdfView.document = document pdfView.autoScales = false pdfView.minScaleFactor = 0.7 pdfView.maxScaleFactor = 4 NotificationCenter.default.addObserver( context.coordinator, selector: #selector(context.coordinator.onPageZoomAndPan), name: .PDFViewScaleChanged, object: pdfView ) return pdfView } func updateUIView(_ uiView: PDFView, context: Context) { // Optional: update logic if needed } func makeCoordinator() -> CustomCoordinator { return CustomCoordinator(parent: self) } } class CustomCoordinator: NSObject, PDFPageOverlayViewProvider, PKCanvasViewDelegate { let parent: PDFRepresentableView init(parent: PDFRepresentableView) { self.parent = parent } func pdfView(_ view: PDFView, overlayViewFor page: PDFPage) -> UIView? { let canvasView = PKCanvasView() let rect = page.bounds(for: .mediaBox) canvasView.drawingPolicy = .anyInput canvasView.tool = PKInkingTool(.pen, color: .black, width: 10) canvasView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = true canvasView.backgroundColor = .red.withAlphaComponent(0.1) canvasView.frame = rect canvasView.isScrollEnabled = false for subView in view.documentView?.subviews ?? [] { subView.isUserInteractionEnabled = true } return canvasView } @objc func onPageZoomAndPan() { parent.pdfView.documentView?.subviews.forEach { subview in if subview.theClassName == "PDFPageView", let pageViewPrivate = subview.value(forKey: "_private") as? NSObject, let page = pageViewPrivate.value(forKey: "page") as? PDFPage { subview.subviews.forEach { subview in if let canvasView = subview as? PKCanvasView { let zoomScale = parent.pdfView.scaleFactor canvasView.contentScaleFactor = UIScreen.main.scale * zoomScale canvasView.drawing = canvasView.drawing canvasView.setNeedsDisplay() canvasView.layoutIfNeeded() } } } } print("Zoom changed. Current scale: \(parent.pdfView.scaleFactor)") } } extension NSObject { var theClassName: String { return NSStringFromClass(type(of: self)) } } But this doesn’t seem to improve the rendered quality. The lines still appear blurry when zoomed in. What I’ve tried: • Adjusting contentScaleFactor and forcing redraw • Reassigning canvasView.drawing • Calling setNeedsDisplay() and layoutIfNeeded() None of these approaches seem to re-render the canvas at a higher resolution or match the zoomed scale of the PDF. My questions: 1. Is there a correct way to scale PKCanvasView content to match PDF zoom levels? 2. Should I recreate the canvas or drawing when zoom changes? 3. Is PKCanvasView just not intended to handle high zoom fidelity? If anyone has successfully overlaid high-resolution canvas drawing on a zoomable PDFView, I’d love to hear how you managed it. Thanks in advance!
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115
Jul ’25
Unexpected lines appear in PDFView on visionOS 26 beta
I’m attempting to display a PDF file in a visionOS application using the PDFView in PDFKit. When running on device with visionOS 26, a horizontal solid line appears on some pages, while on other pages, both a horizontal and vertical solid line appear. These lines do not appear in Xcode preview canvas (macOS, visionOS) on device running visionOS 2.5 on Mac running macOS 15.6 I thought that this could possibly be the page breaks, but setting displaysPageBreaks = false did not appear to be effective. Are there any other settings that could be causing the lines to display? Code Example struct ContentView: View { @State var pdf: PDFDocument? = nil var body: some View { PDFViewWrapper(pdf: pdf) .padding() } } #Preview(windowStyle: .automatic) { ContentView(pdf: PDFDocument(url: Bundle.main.url(forResource: "SampleApple", withExtension: "pdf")!)) .environment(AppModel()) } struct PDFViewWrapper: UIViewRepresentable { let pdf: PDFDocument? func makeUIView(context: Context) -> PDFView { let view = PDFView() view.document = pdf view.displaysPageBreaks = false return view } func updateUIView(_ uiView: PDFView, context: Context) { uiView.document = pdf } } Tested with Xcode Version 16.4 (16F6) Xcode Version 26.0 beta 5 (17A5295f) visionOS 2.5 visionOS 26 Beta 5 I
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84
Aug ’25
Copy file in application document file to user Documents file
I ave an application that makes use of charts. I would like to have a button for the user to save the chart as a PDF. I tried to have the button save the PDF to the user's document directory directly. That attempt failed. But I was able to save the PDF to the application sandboxed documents directory. The question is how to programmatically move that file from the application documents folder to the user's general documents folder. So far I have not been able to find a method that will move the PDF file. Any ideas?
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298
Sep ’25
PDFKit PdfView Black Boxes sometimes
Hi! I'm using PDFKits PdfView to display a PDF file and after several page changes, the background turns black, suddenly (like a big black rectangle). The error occurs in the Books App on the iPad as well and looks similiar to this issue: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8627073?sortBy=rank Anyone got a solution for this?
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170
Sep ’25
PDFKit Zoom Performance Issue with Many Annotations
Hello, I’m using PDFKit to display PDFs with a large number of annotations. However, when there are many annotations, I’m experiencing serious performance issues while zooming in/out with PDFView. • During pinch zoom, it seems like continuous re-rendering occurs. • Memory usage spikes dramatically while zooming, then drops back down repeatedly. • As a result, zooming feels laggy and not smooth. What I’d like to achieve is the following: 1. Prevent unnecessary re-rendering while zooming is in progress. 2. Trigger a single re-render only once the zoom gesture ends (e.g., in scrollViewDidEndZooming). 3. At the very least, avoid the memory spikes during zoom. Is there any way to control how annotations are re-drawn during zooming in PDFKit, or to throttle/debounce rendering so it happens only after the gesture completes? I’d really appreciate any advice from others who have encountered similar issues, or guidance from Apple on the recommended approach. Thanks in advance!
Topic: UI Frameworks SubTopic: UIKit Tags:
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4w
PDFView Crash After Find Changing current selection and calling -scrollSelectionToVisible: on macOS Tahoe
Getting this crash after I do this in PDFKit a lot: PDFSelection *nextSelect = [self.pdfView.document findString:currentSearchString fromSelection:currentSelction withOptions:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch]; if (nextSelect != nil) { self.pdfView.currentSelection = nextSelect; [self.pdfView scrollSelectionToVisible:nil]; } Which often leads to: 0 CoreFoundation 0x000000019ced4770 __exceptionPreprocess + 176 1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x000000019c9b2418 objc_exception_throw + 88 2 CoreFoundation 0x000000019cfffe10 -[__NSPlaceholderDictionary initWithObjects:forKeys:count:] + 724 3 CoreFoundation 0x000000019cfa1ae4 +[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjects:forKeys:count:] + 52 4 PDFKit 0x00000001cb56e0fc -[PDFView _axPostPageChangeNotification:] + 348 5 Foundation 0x000000019e6a25e4 __NSFireDelayedPerform + 372 6 CoreFoundation 0x000000019ce92290 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_TIMER_CALLBACK_FUNCTION__ + 32 7 CoreFoundation 0x000000019ce91f50 __CFRunLoopDoTimer +
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3w
Come forzare la visualizzazione di un font diverso (es. Helvetica su iOS, Arial su Windows) in un PDF non incorporando i caratteri
Sto cercando di creare un PDF che, a seconda del sistema operativo, utilizzi un font diverso. Visto che mi è capitato di scaricare da Internet un PDF che veniva visualizzato con con Arial su Windows e con Helvetica su iOS/macOS (anche su siti di drive, OneDrive ) vorrei creare un PDF che venga visualizzato con Arial su Windows e con Helvetica su iOS/macOS, sfruttando i meccanismi di fallback dei font di sistema (senza incorporare i font nel PDF). Ho provato a: • Scrivere il documento in Arial da Word su Windows; • Scrivere il documento in Helvetica da Word su Windows; • Disattivare l’incorporamento dei font nel salvataggio PDF su “Word”; Tuttavia, su iOS , in app come Onedrive, il PDF continua a visualizzarsi in Arial C’è un modo per: Evitare che iOS usi Arial se presente? Far sì che venga usato Helvetica come fallback? mi interessa anche capire se si può impedire ad iOS di usare Arial in lettura PDF. Qualcuno ha affrontato un caso simile o conosce un modo affidabile per ottenere questo comportamento cross-platform?
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51
Apr ’25
PDF in WebView
Dear all, Is it possible to replace the default PDF background colour the 50% grey to any other colour while using the new WebView? Using the standard .background method on WebView does not appear to have any effect: WebView(pdfWebpage) .background(Color.blue) // no effect on the background of the PDF Thanks!
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91
Jun ’25
Does the canvas view on top of the PDFView not re-render?
I added a canvas view using PDFPageOverlayViewProvider. When I zoom the PDFView, the drawing is scaled, but its quality becomes blurry. How can I fix this? import SwiftUI import PDFKit import PencilKit import CoreGraphics struct ContentView: View { var body: some View { if let url = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "sample", withExtension: "pdf"), let data = try? Data(contentsOf: url), let document = PDFDocument(data: data) { PDFRepresentableView(document: document) } else { Text("fail") } } } #Preview { ContentView() } struct PDFRepresentableView: UIViewRepresentable { let document: PDFDocument let pdfView = PDFView() func makeUIView(context: Context) -> PDFView { pdfView.displayMode = .singlePageContinuous pdfView.usePageViewController(false) pdfView.displayDirection = .vertical pdfView.pageOverlayViewProvider = context.coordinator pdfView.document = document pdfView.autoScales = false pdfView.minScaleFactor = 0.7 pdfView.maxScaleFactor = 4 return pdfView } func updateUIView(_ uiView: PDFView, context: Context) { // Optional: update logic if needed } func makeCoordinator() -> CustomCoordinator { return CustomCoordinator(parent: self) } } class CustomCoordinator: NSObject, PDFPageOverlayViewProvider, PKCanvasViewDelegate { let parent: PDFRepresentableView init(parent: PDFRepresentableView) { self.parent = parent } func pdfView(_ view: PDFView, overlayViewFor page: PDFPage) -> UIView? { let result = UIView() let canvasView = PKCanvasView() canvasView.drawingPolicy = .anyInput canvasView.tool = PKInkingTool(.pen, color: .blue, width: 20) canvasView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false result.addSubview(canvasView) NSLayoutConstraint.activate([ canvasView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: result.leadingAnchor), canvasView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: result.trailingAnchor), canvasView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: result.topAnchor), canvasView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: result.bottomAnchor) ]) for subView in view.documentView?.subviews ?? [] { subView.isUserInteractionEnabled = true } result.layoutIfNeeded() return result } }
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193
Jul ’25