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  • Writer's pictureJon Hoffman

Caching AsyncImage SwiftUI

Updated: Aug 18, 2022


A while back I was creating a list view where each element in the list displayed an image which was download from a web API and I use AsyncImage which is provided with SwiftUI to download and display the image. While building this app, I noticed that while scrolling through the list view, the images were downloaded each time an element was displayed. Even if the image was previously downloaded, AsyncImage would download it again. I thought that this was a waste of data and started looking for a way to cache the images. During this search I came across the CachedAsyncImage package: https://github.com/lorenzofiamingo/swiftui-cached-async-image


CachedAsyncImage is exactly what AsyncImage is except with caching capabilities. The best thing about this package is it provides a drop-in replacement for AsyncImage where no other code changes are necessary therefore in your code wherever you are using the following code:

AsyncImage(url:  urlToImage)

All you need to do is to change it to this:

CachedAsyncImage(url: urlToImage)

And caching capabilities will be added. I use this package anytime I have a list or a scroll view that requires an image and we use it throughout the Open Source Mastering Swift Cocktail app. As an example, in the CocktailColumn view I use CachedAsyncImage like this:

CachedAsyncImage(url: URL(string: strDrinkThumb)) { phase in
    switch phase {
         case .empty:
              ProgressView()
         case .success(let image):
              image.resizable()
                    .scaledToFit()
         case .failure:
              Image(systemName: "photo")
         @unknown default:
              EmptyView()
         }
  }
  .frame(width: 150, height: 150)
  .padding(.bottom, 10)      

Notice that the CachedAsyncImage is used exactly like the AsyncImage with the AsyncImagePhases to change the image while it is being loaded or if there is a failure in loading.


There are installations instructions of CachedAsyncImage on the Github page for the project here: https://github.com/lorenzofiamingo/swiftui-cached-async-image


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