Chris Hannah
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What is Xcode Missing?

Xcode is a great IDE, but after using many other IDEs and text editors, I've noticed that it's missing quite a lot of common functionality. This page will serve as a growing list of features that I find useful in other applications, that Xcode does not have.

If you do find something here that has a solution, or has been addressed in an update, please let me know.

File Operations

  • You can't duplicate a file. There isn't an option when you right-click a file, and you can't use the copy/paste commands on a file either.

Project Navigation

  • There isn't a UI option to open the current file in the project navigator. You can set up a manual keyboard shortcut, but that's it.

Code Style

Code style just isn't a thing in Xcode. Sure, there's SwiftLint and SwiftFormat, but both don't really work seamlessly with Xcode. Which means:

  • You can't set a specific code style for a project to keep the code format consistent.
  • You can't reformat a file or a selection of text to the "correct" format.
  • You can't setup the code style to be applied on save.

Other Miscellaneous Annoyances

  • Xcode seems to think it's a suitable default application for practically any text file.