The Best Xcode Tips and Tricks Every Developer Should Know

Continuous Integration (CI), is a development practice requiring developers to integrate code into a shared repository multiple times a day. Each and every check-in is then verified by an automated build which allows teams to detect problems early. This practice of integrating regularly helps detects errors quickly, and locate them easily.

In Xcode, you ensure that you are continuously automating and streamlining the building, analyzing, testing, and archiving of your Mac and iOS apps, in order to ensure that they are always in a releasable state.

Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Xcode-Based Swift

Assistant Editor

It has been observed that most developers do not use the assistant editor optimally. With it, you can show the counterpart of a file or simultaneously work on the user interface and implementation of a view controller.

With the Assistant Editor, you can find out where or how often a particular method is invoked. All you need to do is place the cursor in the body of a method and select Callers from the Assistant Editor's menu at the top.

Regex Searching

With Xcode, you can search through your project using regular expressions. Go to the Find navigator, click Text, then choose Regular Expression. You can now search and replace code using the regex of your choice.

Renaming Code

There is an option to rename variables and much more with the help of Xcode’s refactoring system. All you need to do is select a variable, go to the Editor menu, and choose Refactor then Rename. Type the name you want and press enter; the name will be changed everywhere.

Testing

You can make use of parallel testing in order to make sure that Xcode runs multiple tests simultaneously to save time, and use random order testing to make Xcode run tests in a different order each time.

Customization

There is an option to customize the layout in Xcode as it adopts when debugging. You need to make it show the paused code in a new tab, show or hide variables, show or hide inspectors, and more. And, once you close the tab, it takes you back to the previous layout.

Toggling

You can seamlessly toggle between recent files with two simple shortcuts — Ctrl+Cmd+Left and Ctrl+Cmd+Right. This allows you to move between the recently opened files. You can also use Ctrl+2 and Ctrl+3 to show these files as a menu.

Distance Measurement

With the Storyboards, you can see the distance between one view and the another. How? Just select a view, hold down Option, then hover over other views to see their distance immediately.

Stress Testing

When you are using IB in the assistant editor, just change Automatic to Preview and then change the language from English to Double-Length Pseudolanguage. This action will cause each and every word in your User Interface to be repeated, which lets you make sure it all fits.

Sound Debugging

When you are working with invisible components such as network requests, you can make use of breakpoints in order to play sounds whenever they succeed or fail. This a smart and effective way of helping you track what is going on.

Conclusion

iOS development has come a long way; today there is more demand for app development than ever. Competition is getting strenuous with each passing year. Customers want better and advanced apps; on the other hand, in the development world, companies want to hire iPhone developers who can do break all the barriers and rise among their peers.