Touch Code Magazine

As I wrote some time ago (here) XCode 4 is somewhat hard to use after being used to XCode 3 for so long.

I personally do a lot of printing and debugging in the console – and by default the console in XCode 4 is crammed together with gazillion other stuff into a single window and it’s just not so pleasant to resize it all the time between the coding and the debugging, etc:

Here’s a tip for everyone who is struggling with the default console in XCode 4 about how to get back the Console window (almost) as it was behaving in XCode 3:

1) Make sure you are using tabs in XCode 4 (if you are not doing that – enable it right now go to View -> Show Tab Bar)

2) Add a new tab – I find it easier to just double click just a bit right off the last tab in the tab bar, but you also have a “+” button on the far right

3) Doble click on the name of the newly created tab – it allows you to change the name; change it to “Console”

4) In the new “Console” tab enlarge the console window – the button is on the bottom right – just above where usually the tiny console window appears :

5) Resize the console window to take all the height possible (while you do so the code editor will disappear and leave all the space to the console)

6) Now click on the Console tab and drag it outside the tab bar – this way you just got a console window! Not ready yet though – now hide the navigator in this window, so the console can really take up all the space possible :

7) Now for the final touch – in XCode 3 when you start the project the console window jumps in front when there’s output so you can see what’s going on. XCode 4 introduces a system called behaviors where you can actually set exactly the same rule to be executed when you start your project or when there’s output. Go to XCode -> Preferences -> Behaviors and set your Project run settings:

In the image above I chose to “Show tab named ‘Console’” when a build runs, also I left “show navigator” unchecked so I don’t have any navigator strips appearing in my Console window, “Show” debug area is unchecked (you can actually say “hide debug area” if it appears sometimes in the console window, but this might be actually cool too)

OK! This now is something different – every time I run my project I get the Console window and I can watch what’s going on without the output lines wrapping in a 20chars wide tiny window

Have a good look what’s in Behaviors – that’s a powerful way to customize XCode 4, after I starting customizing my XCode 4 behaviors I feel much more comfortable working with XCode 4.

Just a last note: you can actually close the Console window – on the next run XCode will automatically open it where it was the last time.

If that was useful or you have questions, do leave me a comment

Marin