Hidden Features of Xcode

Question

With a huge influx of newbies to Xcode, I'm sure there are lots of Xcode tips and tricks to be shared.

What are yours?

8 revs, 3 users 72% · Answer 1 · 2011-02-19 12:16:20Z

343

Switch to Header/Source File

Option ⌥ Command ⌘ Up Arrow ↑

View > Switch to Header/Source File

Switches between the .m and .h files.

In Xcode 4 this is ctrl Command ⌘ Up Arrow ↑

edited Feb 19 '11 at 12:16

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8 revs, 3 users 72%
Senseful

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This is absolutely my favorite, too. I use it constantly. Also works when we are talking about cpp and h. Not just m! :) – que que Sep 30 '08 at 21:20

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It's called "option" on the Mac, not "alt". And if you want fancy symbols, it can be written ⌥⌘↑ – Brian Campbell Mar 31 '09 at 15:33

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@Brian Your right...but it also says "alt" on the key – epatel Mar 31 '09 at 18:44

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Note that in Xcode 3.2, you have to change the key bindings to restore ⌘⌥⇠/⇢ to switch-file. They changed the default to move between positions in the same file. – Peter Hosey Sep 14 '09 at 12:34

71

A three finger swipe up on the touchpad is another shortcut for the same action. – Nathan Dec 30 '09 at 2:07

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7 revs, 4 users 60% · Answer 2 · 2011-04-04 11:46:32Z

⌘ Command + Double-Click on a symbol: Jump to Definition of a symbol.

⌥ Option + Double-Click on a symbol: Find Text in Documentation of a symbol. (Only works if you have they symbol's Doc Set installed.)

Favorites Bar:

Favorites bar is just like you have in Safari for storing - well - favorites. I often use it as a place to store shortcuts (which you can do by drag-dropping) to files I am using right now. Generally this is more useful when I'm working with a large or unfamiliar project.

To show the Favorites Bar, select the following menu option:

View > Layout > Show Favorites Bar

Gasp! Show Favorites Bar, where have you been my whole life!
The favorites bar has been "replaced" in Xcode 4 with persistent tabs.

5 revs, 3 users 48% · Answer 3 · 2011-08-15 22:26:01Z

127

Auto-completion Keyboard Shortcuts

Tab ⇥ OR Control ⌃ /: Select the next auto-completion argument.

Shift ⇧ Tab ⇥ OR Shift ⇧ Control ⌃ /: Select the previous auto-completion argument.

Escape ⎋: Shows the auto completion pop-up list.

edited Aug 15 '11 at 22:26

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5 revs, 3 users 48%
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18

Note that the new XCode uses Tab to move between arguments in completions. It's more fluid. – Jab Aug 17 '09 at 17:48

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9 revs, 3 users 51% · Answer 4 · 2011-10-22 16:54:13Z

Turn off the "undo past the last point" warning

When you attempt to undo after saving, you will get the following prompt:

"You are about to undo past the last point this file was saved. Do you want to do this?"

To get rid of this warning, enter the following into a terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.Xcode XCShowUndoPastSaveWarning NO

Change the company name in template files

Paste this into the Terminal application:

defaults write com.apple.Xcode PBXCustomTemplateMacroDefinitions '{"ORGANIZATIONNAME" = "Microsoft";}'

Change "`com.yourcompanyname`" in all your templates:

Find the directory:/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Project Templates/Application
Use your favourite multi-file search-and-replace tool to change com.yourcompany to whatever value you normally use to build for a device. I used BBEdit's multi-find-and-replace after I opened the whole directory. You should be replacing the value in all the info.plist files. I found 8 files to change. The number of times a build has failed because I forgot to change this string is ridiculous.

Quickly jump to a Group in the Groups and Files pane

Control ⌃ Option ⌥ Shift ⇧ + <First letter of a Group name>

If you hold down the three keys above, you can quickly jump to groups in the left (Groups and Files) page by pressing the first letter of a groups name. For example, Control ⌃Option ⌥Shift ⇧T takes you to Targets and Control ⌃Option ⌥Shift ⇧S to Source. Press it again and it jumps to SCM. Sometimes it takes several tries for this to work (I don't know why).

Cycling between autocompletion choices

Control ⌃ .

Shift ⇧ Control ⌃ .: Cycles backwards between autocompletion choices.

Control ⌃. (Control-Period) after a word automatically accepts the first choice from the autocompletion menu. Try typing log then Control ⌃. and you'll get a nice NSLog statement. Press it again to cycle through any choices. To see all the mutable choices, type NSMu then Control ⌃..

Quick Help

Control ⌃ Command ⌘ ? (While your cursor is in the symbol to look up)

Option ⌥ + <Double-click a symbol>

Help > Quick Help

To get to the documentation from the Quick Help window, click the book icon on the top right.

See the documentation for a symbol

Command ⌘ Option ⌥ + <Double-click a symbol>

Takes you straight to the full documentation.

Make non-adjacent text selections

Command ⌘ Control ⌃ + <Double-click in the editor>

Use the above shortcut for a strange way of selecting multiple words. You can make selections of words in totally different places, then delete or copy them all at once. Not sure if this is useful. It's Xcode only as far as I can tell.

Use Emacs key bindings to navigate through your code

This trick works in all Cocoa application on the Mac (TextEdit, Mail, etc.) and is possibly one of the most useful things to know.

Command ⌘ Left Arrow or Command ⌘ Right Arrow Takes you to the beginning and end of a line.
Control ^ a and Control ^ e Do the same thing
Control ^ n and Control ^ p Move the cursor up or down one line.
Control ^ f and Control ^ b Move the cursor back or forward one space

Pressing Shift ⇧ with any of these selects the text between move points. Put the cursor in the middle of a line and press Shift ⇧ Control ^ e and you can select to the end of the line.

Pressing Option ⌥ will let you navigate words with the keyboard. Option ⌥ Control ^ f skips to the end of the current word. Option ⌥ Control ^ b skips to the beginning of the current word. You can also use Option ⌥ with the left and right arrow keys to move one-word-at-a-time.

Control ^ Left Arrow and Control ^ Right Arrow moves the cursor between camel-cased parts of a word.

Try it with NSMutableArray. You can quickly change it to NSArray by putting your cursor after theNS, pressing Shift ⇧ Control ^ Right Arrow then Delete.

Control-Command-double-click is just necessary because Xcode uses Command-double-click for something else other than a discontiguous word selection. In most Cocoa apps you can do discontiguous selection with the Command modifier alone.

7 revs, 3 users 62% · Answer 5 · 2011-04-04 12:37:22Z

Open Quickly...

Command ⌘ Shift ⇧ D

File > Open Quickly...

I'm a big fan of the Open Quickly feature, which is particularly good in Xcode 3.1 and later. When you want to open a file or a symbol definition that's in your project or in a framework, just hit the keyboard shortcut, type a bit of the file or symbol's name, use Up Arrow ↑ and Down Arrow ↓ to pick to the right result (if need be), and then hit Return ↩ to open the file or navigate to the symbol definition.

On Xcode 4:

Command ⌘ Shift ⇧ o

Open Quickly uses the current word as a search term

Also, something I didn't know about Xcode until two minutes ago (when schwa pointed it out in a comment) is that, if the editor's text caret is inside of a word when Open Quickly is invoked, that word will be used as the Open Quickly search term.

On the Mac, a "cursor" indicates your mouse position; the flashing vertical bar is the "insertion point".
@Nicholas Riley: Caret is the right word, AFAIK - our mac developers always called it that when I worked in a software company
@Flubba: Caret is certainly used for this, I don't dispute it at all; it's just not the common user- or developer-centric term on Macs. If you Google for "caret site:developer.apple.com" you'll just find hits in TrueType documentation and in a single, very recently written, iPad document.

2 revs, 2 users 67% · Answer 6 · 2010-06-22 19:50:52Z

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Use #pragma for organization

You can use:

#pragma mark Foo

... as a way to organize methods in your source files. When browsing symbols via the pop up menu, whatever you place in Foo will appear bold in the list.

To display a separator (i.e. horizontal line), use:

#pragma mark -

It's very useful, especially for grouping together delegate methods or other groups of methods.

edited Jun 22 '10 at 19:50

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2 revs, 2 users 67%
Steve Streza

9

typing # p will usually trigger code completion '#pragma mark <LABEL>' for quickly adding the label part. – willc2 Jun 28 '09 at 5:22

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It also grabs # TODO statements. Now if only it would also grab # XXX, which is commonly used in the code base I work on... – asmeurer Dec 28 '10 at 6:22

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Xcode 4 also supports "#pragma mark - Foo" which adds the mark AND a separator at the same time. – typeoneerror Aug 4 '11 at 0:07

6 revs, 3 users 75% · Answer 7 · 2011-08-15 22:25:10Z

1. Breakpoint on "objc_exception_throw"

You should always have a breakpoint on objc_exception_throw.

2. Debugging retain/release problems with "Zombie" variables

Use the following code:

NSZombieEnabled = YES;
NSDeallocateZombies = NO;

... to debug retain and release problems. For more information, see the "Finding Memory Leaks" section of Apple's Debugging Applications document.

3. Jumping to a class in Xcode from Interface Builder

Command ⌘ + Double-click on an object in Interface Builder's Document Window to jump to that class in Xcode. This is very handy with File's Owner.

4. Reusing customized objects in Interface Builder

Drag a customized object back to Interface Builder's Library for later reuse.

5. Select overlapping items in Interface Builder

Control ⌃ Shift ⇧ + Click on an object in Interface Builder to see a menu of all of the objects under the mouse.

6. Interface Builder Gesture Guide

Interface Builder Gesture Guide.

Great Answer! I'd give two upvotes for (3) and (4) which I didn't know before.

4 revs, 4 users 38% · Answer 8 · 2010-12-10 16:17:18Z

75

Ctrl + 2: Access the popup list of methods and symbols in the current file.

This is super useful because with this shortcut you can navigate through a file entirely using the keyboard. When you get to the list, start typing characters and the list will type-select to the symbol you are looking for.

edited Dec 10 '10 at 16:17

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4 revs, 4 users 38%
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I use Spaces (CTRL-2 goes to Space #2) so I remapped the key binding. It can be found under "Text Key Bindings" in item "Pop Symbols PopUp." – bbrown Apr 10 '09 at 21:16

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Nice tip. Made me discover that Control-1 will bring up the file history list. – tmadsen Feb 8 '10 at 7:28

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In XCode5 it's CTRL+6 I believe – Ran Apr 5 '11 at 5:59

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Is there a keybinding for this in XCode 4? I'm using Spaces, so I'd like to rebind this, but I can't find it. – Geoffrey Wiseman Apr 8 '11 at 1:41

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In XCode4 it's ^6. It's called Show Document Items. – WBlasko Jul 5 '11 at 2:02

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5 revs, 2 users 73% · Answer 9 · 2011-08-15 22:21:03Z

Zoom Editor In

If your window displays both the detail and editor view, you can zoom the editor in to expand the editor view to the full height of the window. (This is fairly easily found, but many seem to overlook it.)

You can do this by using one of the following methods:

Command ⌘ Shift ⇧ E

View > Zoom Editor In

Drag the splitter (between the editor window and the file list above it) upwards.

It took me AGES to find out how to hide the tree as well - Command-Option-Shift-E. Ah, sweet relief. I'm forever indebted to the MacMacDev Glasgow group for letting me know this.

3 revs · Answer 10 · 2011-03-12 22:01:46Z

Get Colin Wheeler's Complete Xcode Keyboard Shortcut List (available as PDF or PNG). Print it and keep it somewhere visible (I've got it on the wall next to my screen).

edit: Updated versions for Xcode 3.2

edit 2: Updated versions for Xcode 4

comctrl6 · Answer 11

52

Not much of a keyboard shortcut but the TODO comments in the source show up in the method/function dropdown at the top of the editor.

So for example:

// TODO: Some task that needs to be done.

shows up in the drop down list of methods and functions so you can jump to it directly.

Most Java IDEs show a marker for these task tags in the scrollbar, which is nicer, but this also works.

answered Oct 14 '08 at 4:33

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comctrl6

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This even works with // !!!: and // ???: – Jens Kohl Sep 19 '09 at 23:39

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Works for //FIXME: too. – ustun Oct 3 '09 at 11:06

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I just tried // MARK: and it has the exact same effect as #pragma mark. You can even use // MARK: with a dash to get the separator. – Rose Perrone Sep 2 '10 at 4:12

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Anyone know how to do this in Xcode4? – ing0 Apr 6 '11 at 13:16

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In Xcode 3 TODO comments can be placed anywhere in the code and they will appear in the function popup. For some reason in Xcode 4 TODO comments must be outside any function/method body to appear. It's a bug. – SteveCaine Sep 27 '11 at 20:31

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Michel · Answer 12

51

⌘-[ and ⌘-] to indent and unindent selected text. Makes cleaning up source code much easier.

answered Nov 8 '08 at 22:31

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Michel

14

Or just select it and hit control-I (like tab but not really). – Nicholas Riley Nov 1 '09 at 1:35

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Mike · Answer 13

43

Hold Option while splitting windows to split vertically rather than horizontally.

answered Mar 31 '09 at 15:21

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Mike

4

Very nice on a 30" monitor. Thanks! – Rob Sep 14 '09 at 2:55

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This helped a lot! – Raj May 18 '10 at 12:47

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Julien Chastang · Answer 14

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Double-click on the square brackets or parentheses to obtain bracket and parentheses matching.

answered Jan 15 '09 at 20:25

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Julien Chastang

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2 revs, 2 users 90% · Answer 15 · 2011-10-22 16:54:47Z

Control Xcode's text editor from the command line: xed

> xed -x                # open a new untitled document
> xed -xc foo.txt       # create foo.txt and open it
> xed -l 2000 foo.txt   # open foo.txt and go to line 2000

# set Xcode to be your EDITOR for command line tools
# e.g. for subversion commit
> echo 'export EDITOR="xed -wcx"' >> ~/.profile

> man xed               # there's a man page, too

Matt Dillard · Answer 16

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"Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow" to do intra-word text navigation. I use this feature to jump the cursor from the one "camel hump" in a variable to the next.

answered Oct 1 '08 at 14:41

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Matt Dillard

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It's great so long as you have Spaces disabled :\ – jbrennan Aug 17 '09 at 17:58

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@jbrennan I have Spaces assigned to ⌃+⌥+⇧+⌘ Edit: To set Spaces to ⌃+⌥+⇧+⌘, select the "To switch between spaces:" and the "To switch directly to a space:" popup and hold down the Control, Option, Shift and Command keys. – jrtc27 Jul 12 '10 at 9:51

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2 revs · Answer 17 · 2008-10-01 08:17:39Z

Xcode supports text macros that can be invoked via the Insert Text Macro menu at the end of the Editmenu. They can also be invoked using Code Sense, Xcode's code completion technology.

For example, Typing the key sequence p i m control-period will insert #import "file" into your code, with file as an editable token just like with code completion.

2 revs, 2 users 67% · Answer 18 · 2010-11-27 13:47:41Z

30

Right click on a variable in your function and click edit all in scope. Been using it a lot since I found this out.

ctrl ⌘ T

edited Nov 27 '10 at 13:47

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2 revs, 2 users 67%
robottobor

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You can access this using Ctrl-Command-T when over the word you want to edit. Much faster than a pesky menu! – John Gallagher Nov 27 '09 at 17:23

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The default shortcut changed to Ctrl+Command+E in Xcode 4, and can be changed in the key bindings preferences. – Dov Apr 13 '11 at 19:28

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Dewayne Christensen · Answer 19

28

You can have Xcode run the preprocessor over your Info.plist file:

        <key>CFBundleShortVersionString</key>
    #ifdef DEBUG
        <string>1.0 (debug)</string>
    #else
        <string>1.0</string>
    #endif

See http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2007/tn2175.html for details.

answered Sep 30 '08 at 18:25

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Dewayne Christensen

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Note that if you do this, your Info.plist will always have to be edited as text; you won't be able to edit it in the nice Property List Editor that keeps it using correct keys and value types. – Chris Hanson Oct 1 '08 at 7:46

2 revs, 2 users 67% · Answer 20 · 2011-10-22 16:49:37Z

Debugging - how to use GDB

Being new to this still, I find trapping and identifying faults a rather daunting job. The console, despite it being a powerful tool, usually does not yield very intuitive results and knowing what you are looking at in the debugger can be equally difficult to understand. With the help of some of they guys on Stack Overflow and the good article about debugging that can be found at Cocoa With Love it becomes a little more friendly.

2 revs, 2 users 67% · Answer 21 · 2009-11-01 01:35:20Z

26

Navigate among open files back and forth:
⌥⌘←
⌥⌘→

edited Nov 1 '09 at 1:35

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2 revs, 2 users 67%
Vladimir Grigorov

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The key is "option" (⌥) on the Mac, not "alt." – Chris Hanson Oct 4 '08 at 19:14

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The white Apple keyboard does indeed have alt written on the option key. – Chris Lundie Oct 19 '08 at 2:35

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Chris, the 'alt' label is for switchers. Old school Mac guys know it as Option. Like God intended. – willc2 Jun 28 '09 at 5:18

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If you're a fan of trackpad gestures, you can also use a three-finger swipe to the left and right to get the same effect. – Reed Olsen Aug 27 '10 at 17:46

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blissapp · Answer 22

Technically an Interface Builder tip, but they're a book-matched pair, so I don't think this is off topic...

Shift + Right Click on one of your controls and you get a nice pick list of the object hierarchy. No more click, click, click, frustration!

4 revs, 2 users 73% · Answer 23 · 2011-10-22 10:15:40Z

With Trackpad:

Swipe Three Fingers Up - Switch between header and source file, which is easier than Cmd + Opt + Up;
Swipe three fingers down - Switch between declaration and definition when selecting a class or method, found these two kind currently;
Swipe three fingers left - Go back (Cmd + Opt + Left);
Swipe three fingers right - Go forward (Cmd + Opt + Right);

Tested with Xcode 3.2.5.

3 revs, 2 users 75% · Answer 24 · 2010-12-10 16:23:08Z

The class browser in Xcode! Reached by pressing shift + ⌘ + c. You can reduce the scope to only show your active project. It gives you a less cluttered view as long as you only want to browse the class hierarchy.

4 revs, 2 users 95% · Answer 25 · 2011-10-22 17:02:10Z

Using `]` to automatically insert `[` in the correct location

I come from a .NET background, so I'm used to typing a symbol and then typing one of its method names. So I always forget to include the [ before I start typing the object name. Usually this meant I would need to go to the beginning of the line and add the [ manually. I didn't realize I could just press ] at the current cursor position, and it will be added automatically.

There are ways to use this: either after typing the function's name, or right before typing the function's name.

Method 1: after the function name

myObject testMethod]

... becomes:

[myObject testMethod]

... with the caret positioned after the ].

Method 2: before the function name

myObject]

... becomes:

[myObject ]

... with the caret positioned right before the ].

The advantage of the latter (2) is that code completion will filter on the methods of your object. Whereas with the former (1) if you try to invoke code completion immediately after myObject, it won't be filtered. Another advantage to (2) is it behaves more like other programming languages that use dot notation. You type the name of the object then simply ] instead of . to access a method.

Frank Szczerba · Answer 26

Select a block of text and type cmd-/ to comment it out. Do it again to remove the comments characters.

This is especially useful when combined with brace-matching by double-clicking on balanced chars (parens, braces, brackets).

nicktmro · Answer 27

Being able to quickly see all the methods that can be overriden from a super class. For example when extending UITableViewController I just type in my implementation:

- ta

and then I hit ESC to see all the methods from my superclass that begin with "ta" such as

- (UITableViewCell *) tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath

This also works when adopting protocols.

2 revs, 2 users 67% · Answer 28 · 2010-10-07 13:04:14Z

14

Command ⌘ alt ⌥ shift T : reveal the current edited file in the project tree.

edited Oct 7 '10 at 13:04

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2 revs, 2 users 67%
VdesmedT

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2 revs, 2 users 67% · Answer 29 · 2011-03-29 18:51:55Z

14

ctrl + alt + ⌘ + r to clear the log

edited Mar 29 '11 at 18:51

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2 revs, 2 users 67%
Nick

1

Interesting, I thought Apple frowned on shortcuts that needed both hands to execute? – Tejaswi Yerukalapudi Apr 4 '11 at 15:03

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Xcode 4 ⌘ + K – Ahmad Kayyali Oct 10 '11 at 14:14

mmalc · Answer 30

Use the Class Browser to show inherited methods

Apple's API reference documentation does not show methods inherited from a superclass. Sometimes, though. it's useful to be able to see the full range of functionality available for a class -- including a custom class of your own. You can use the Class Browser (from the Project menu) to display a flat or hierarchical list of all the classes related to a current project. The upper pane on the right hand side of the browser window shows a list of methods associated with the object selected in the browser. You can use the Configure Options sheet to select "Show Inherited Members" to show inherited methods as well as those defined by the selected class itself. You click the small book symbol to go to the corresponding documentation.

Hidden Features of Xcode