Xcode is one of those IDEs that you either love or hate ( sometimes both ). Coming from a Visual Studio background it has taken awhile to get used to the Xcode workflow. I’m still hopeful that someone will create a Resharper like tool for Xcode, but until then I wanted to share some of the plugins that I’ve found useful.
Completion Dictionary
This plugin provides enhanced auto completion. I bounce between languages frequently and this makes remembering the specific syntax I’m thinking of much easier.
http://www.obdev.at/products/completion-dictionary/index.html
Code Pilot
Calling this Spotlight for for Xcode would be an understatement. Once you get used to Code Pilot you will rarely leave the keyboard. In short navigation made easy.
Accessorizer
This plugin seems to be the closest thing Xcode has to Resharper. With 40+ code generation actions and a ton of help this is well worth the small purchase price.
http://www.kevincallahan.org/software/accessorizer.html
Color Sense
This visual plugin provides a color picker when working with UIColor ( and NSColor ). I rarely use this plugin, but when I do it is a time saver.
https://github.com/omz/Colorsense-for-Xcode
KSImageNamed-Xcode
Can’t remember whether that image you just added to the project was called button-separator-left or button-left-separator? Now you don’t have to, because this will autocomplete your imageNamed: calls like you’d expect. Just type in [NSImage imageNamed: or [UIImage imageNamed: and all the images in your project will conveniently appear in the autocomplete menu.
Read more about this plugin on Kent Sutherlands blog.
On Github: https://github.com/ksuther/KSImageNamed-Xcode
XcodeColors
XcodeColors allows you to use colors in the Xcode debugging console.
https://github.com/robbiehanson/XcodeColors
HOStringSense
If you work with large strings in your code you will definitely want to check out this plugin. You can enter your full string into this plugin’s UI and it will correctly escape and insert the string into your code.
https://github.com/holtwick/HOStringSense-for-Xcode
Bracket Matcher
This plugin automatically inserting paired message sending brackets. Maybe I’m missing something but shouldn’t Xcode do this for you by default?
https://github.com/ciaran/xcode-bracket-matcher
Fixins
I recently found a github project by Dave Keck that has several Xcode plugins are extremely useful. My favorite is the CurrentLineHighligher but would recommend checking them all out.
- CurrentLineHighlighter
- DisableAnimations
- FindFix
- HideDistractions
- InhibitTabNextPlaceholder
- TabAcceptsCompletion
https://github.com/davekeck/Xcode-4-Fixins
MiniXCode
Just want to focus on the code? This plugin allows you to reduce the sometimes massive Xcode toolbars.
https://github.com/omz/MiniXcode
AppCode
A commenter (Nick) mentioned that JetBrains has a great IDE called AppCode available at http://www.jetbrains.com/objc.
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