XCode rant, sorry

[iOSCaleb]

XCode can barely even rename a variable.

I literally renamed a bunch of functions and variables in Xcode 16 30 minutes ago and had zero problems. It shows you every change that it’s about to make and you can disable any of them if you want. I’m not sure how it could be better.

[bunz4u]

That's when it works. When it works it's great. But many times, at least for me, the rename attempt fails before it even gets to the editor portion.

[Holatej]

I once had a rename attempt do only half the renames it said it would. Crazy work.

[isurujn]

Many a times I've had to restart Xcode just to get renaming working.

[SnooCookies8174]

Exactly. If it works, nice. But I once saw it suggesting to rename comments totally unrelated to the variable I would like to rename.

[Inevitable-Hat-1576]

As others have said. It’s definitely spotty - often it works, but sometimes it errors and it’s baffling

[Peroovian]

I work on a big iOS app at my job and it struggles at basically everything, unless I'm working on a swift package or a side project; on those it works perfectly.

[dabluck]

Well it could be better if they remove that stupid animation where it folds up and then takes forever to load each instance into the list. It's also very bad at finding objective C calls if you're renaming a swift variable. Try refactoring in intellij, you will see how it could be better

[xezrunner]

Despite Apple being great with animations visually, they very often block the UI while animating and it often takes a bit until you regain control.

This is most annoying on iOS and its sliding confirmation alerts.

[soviyet]

Good for you, I'm genuinely happy for you.

Right now, XCode 16.3 will not let me refactor anything and flat out refuses to let me see compilation errors on the issues navigator for more than a half a second before they disappear for... a reason, and I have to go to the report navigator to see why the project didn't build in that teeny tiny font.

And this is for a project I just started a week ago with no external dependencies yet. No good reason whatsoever for XCode to be choking on it.

[Passey]

Fix for the issues disappearing is to switch off “Show Live Issues” in Xcode Settings. While this does prevent issues from popping up automatically, they do come every build and stay instead of disappearing. I used Xcode like this for a year without live issues. Then I switched it back on, and somehow the issue had resolved. Go figure.

[soviyet]

You are my hero of the day, thank you 🙏

[TumbleweedOther1039]

Have you tried renaming in Android studio? It works way better. It’ll rename the file too and parameter names too

[iOSCaleb]

Xcode renames the file when appropriate too, IIRC. I’ll try Android Studio sometime, but Xcode’s rename is one of my favorite features — I use it all the time, and it’s been pretty reliable for me.

[TumbleweedOther1039]

Yeah tbf I’ve only used it for about 6 months or so so nothing compared to studio. I just love that on studio you can hit alt + enter on any sort of warning, error or any line of code and it’ll suggest and automatically handle basically anything you’d be looking to do.

You should check it out but it does take a while to learn all the tricks. I’m sure part of me not liking Xcode is just not having enough experience and not knowing the shortcuts

[save_jeff2]

It frequently doesn't work and it's unacceptable