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Useful less known Xcode tips to improve your workflow

Xcode is the main IDE for developing software for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It contains a lot of well-known features like Open Quickly (⇧ + ⌘ + O), the assistant editor and handy shortcuts like ⌘ + U to run tests quickly. Some other features are less known but just as useful and these Xcode tips will be described.

Edit All in Scope

Use ⌃ + ⌘ + E to edit All in Scope and change all variables or methods with the same name at the same time.

Edit All in Scope

Edit All in Scope

Jump to definition

Until Xcode 9 it was easy to jump to a definition. Starting with Xcode 9 a new menu would show up.

Jump to Definition

Jump to Definition

As the popup hints, a new combination is introduced to quickly jump to the definition. Combine ^ + ⌘ + Click to directly jump to a definition and skip the popup.

Add documentation

Use ⌥ + ⌘ + / to quickly add documentation.

Add Documentation

Add Documentation

Define custom Search Scopes

Often when searching a lot of frameworks are shown inside the search results. This can be quite a mess when searching for code in your personal project or framework.

By defining your own custom search scope you can speed up your workflow and find what you need more quickly.

Search Scopes

Search Scopes

Show only scheme related or failed tests

In the left-bottom of the Xcode Navigator, you often find useful less-known tools. Two useful filtering methods are available for tests. The Show only tests in the currently selected scheme hides all unrelated tests for a better overview. The button next to that only shows failed tests if you need focus for fixing tests.

Scheme filtered tests

Scheme filtered tests

Show Only Errors

Another feature in the Xcode Navigator is the filter option to only show errors. If your project contains a lot of warnings this can be very helpful to focus on errors only.

Show only errors

Show only errors

More Xcode tips

Xcode 10 brings a lot of new useful features, from which some aren’t enabled by default. You can read more about these Xcode tips in my post Enabling newly added opt-in features in Xcode 10.

 

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