Xcode Tips 💡

The more you know... 😎

Simulator

Tiling the simulator

If you frequently move from Xcode to the simulator, tile them side by side. With the simulator active, go to the Window menu and choose Tile Window To Right Of Screen, then select Xcode on the left. You can adjust the split so the simulator sits snugly on the right.

Source: Paul Hudson

Status bars

Clean up and configure Simulator status bars using simctl status_bar, automate using Nine41.

Source: Jesse Squires

Device mask in screenshots

Since Xcode 12 you can configure the simulator to apply a device mask to screenshots.

Go into simulator’s File menu, press ⌥, “Save Screen…” and there tick “Apply device mask to screenshot”. Now your sim will save screenshots with a transparent notch and corners!

You can also enable it within Simulator preferences.

Source: Roman Shevtsov and Jean-Étienne

Save Simulator recordings as GIFs

You can go to Xcode Simulator File > Record Screen to record the simulator, and turn it into a GIF (if you want to) by right clicking on the clip, and Save as Animated GIF.

Source: Ting Becker

iOS 15 Simulator’s Spotlight process consistently uses ~100% of CPU

To fix the SwiftUI Preview simulators:

cd ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/UserData/Previews/Simulator\ Devices/

find . -name com.apple.suggestions.plist -exec plutil -replace SuggestionsAppLibraryEnabled -bool NO {} ";"

To fix regular Simulator instances:

cd ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices 

find . -name com.apple.suggestions.plist -exec plutil -replace SuggestionsAppLibraryEnabled -bool NO {} ";"

Source: @pi80223 - Apple Dev Forums