Xcode

Launch screens appear when your app starts up and give the user the impression that your app is fast and responsive. After your app is loaded it will be replaced with your app's first screen after which the user can start using your app. Xcode creates a storyboard by default ...

Xcode 12 introduced support for using Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) image assets in iOS, macOS, and iPadOS. It's one of those changes that you might have missed during WWDC 2020 as it's quite a small addition. Up until Xcode 12, we were able to use single scale resources by using ...

SwiftUI Previews allow us to develop a lot faster as we can now preview our views live in Xcode. Whenever we change a piece of code, our preview will update and show the rendered change accordingly. While developing a view that has to change into different appearances for certain states ...

Dark Mode was introduced in iOS 13 and announced at WWDC 2019. It adds a darker theme to iOS and allows you to do the same for your app. It's a great addition to give to your users so they can experience your app in a darker design. In this ...

Xcode 11 was introduced during WWDC 2019 and contained improvements in the way the assistant editor works. If you're using a second editor a lot it can be quite frustrating at first when you try to use the same workflow in Xcode 11 when files are opened in the left ...

Xcode breakpoints allow us to debug and find out solutions for nasty bugs. Without breakpoints, it would be a fun fest with a lot of print statements everywhere in your code. The basic principles of breakpoints we probably all know but there's a lot more to discover! What are breakpoints ...

Xcode Instruments is a developer tool that comes for free with Xcode. It has a lot of useful tools to inspect and improve your app. Although it has a lot to offer, it's often an area which is a bit less known. In this blog post, I'll show you how ...

Unused images can exist as a result of iterations in a project. Once a feature is no longer needed and remove, it's not always cleaned up completely. Therefore, it's useful to know how to clean up your Xcode assets. Just like in my blog post on cleaning up unused localized ...

Xcode Previews have been added in Xcode 11 and allow you to quickly preview the current state of your view. Although you might think that you need to use SwiftUI to make use of this great new feature, it's not true! Whether you're working with a custom UIView or with ...

Strings files are used for localization in iOS and MacOS apps. These files can grow over time and make it hard to maintain. It's easy to end up with a lot of unused localized strings. Although this is not an issue for performance or slowing you down a lot, it ...

A cheat sheet can be a handy tool to quickly reference Xcode, Swift or iOS logic from a compact overview. Ideally, you can print them out and lay them down on your desk. This makes it really easy to access and use them often. Therefore, I'll show you a few ...

Xcode behaviors can change the way how Xcode responds to certain events. Default behaviors help you already by showing for example the debug navigator when hitting a breakpoint, but they can speed you up a lot more. A list of behaviors which are not enabled by default. Starting point is ...