I found a nasty workaround, posted it here https://github.com/JuniperPhoton/Widget-Intermediate-Animation/issues/1. Long story short – updating a SwiftData object that (might have) changed will force SwiftData to pull the other updates to this object. So what I did was the following: .onChange(of: scenePhase) { _, newValue in if case .active = newValue { items.forEach { $0.title = $0.title } } }