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I was wondering if anyone could tell me what Xcode is actually doing when it says: "Processing Symbol Files" after plugging in your device?

Screenshot

Woodstock
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  • I had to wait for quite long time...around 30 minutes and later deployment on device succeeded. Maybe Mac is taking time to recognise device. – Jayprakash Dubey May 11 '16 at 12:35

8 Answers8

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It downloads the (debug) symbols from the device, so it becomes possible to debug on devices with that specific iOS version and also to symbolicate crash reports that happened on that iOS version.

Since symbols are CPU specific, the above only works if you have imported the symbols not only for a specific iOS device but also for a specific CPU type. The currently CPU types needed are armv7 (e.g. iPhone 4, iPhone 4s), armv7s (e.g. iPhone 5) and arm64 (e.g. iPhone 5s).

So if you want to symbolicate a crash report that happened on an iPhone 5 with armv7s and only have the symbols for armv7 for that specific iOS version, Xcode won't be able to (fully) symbolicate the crash report.

mfaani
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Kerni
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    I recently found that Xcode would not process symbol files from either my iPad2 or my iPhone4s. Always it would stop halfway through and never complete, not even after half an hour. In the end I got it to work... by breaking out a completely brand new connector cable and plugging it directly into my Mac Mini (previously I had been plugged in via an extension cable). I concluded that poor connection REALLY messes with symbol updates. – Ash May 01 '14 at 20:37
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    So why not bundle those symbols with the xcode distribution? Why go to all the trouble of extracting them from the device? – Matthew Exon Jul 16 '15 at 06:24
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    Symbols for all architectures are bigger than 1GB in size per (iOS) version, and there is not always an Xcode update for each bugfix release. Xcode is only being updated with API updates/changes. – Kerni Jul 16 '15 at 08:03
  • @VladimirDespotovic What do you want to solve here? This is not a problem. This needs to be done as the debugger needs this data and for crash symbolication this is also needed. The question also didn't state a problem. – Kerni Aug 15 '16 at 17:40
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In Xcode Version 6.1.1 (6A2008a), after "Processing Symbol Files", a folder containing symbols associated with the device (including iOS version and CPU type) was created in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport/ like this:

enter image description here

fujianjin6471
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    what was in (null) (null) ? – Anton Tropashko Dec 17 '15 at 10:22
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    @AntonTropashko `(null) ((null))` actually. – Alejandro Iván Mar 21 '16 at 13:28
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    In my case, "(null) ((null))" contained... nothing! – Sjakelien Mar 23 '16 at 05:57
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    Since the Sym Files are downloaded when needed, I trashed most of all the folders in this location. It freed up over 24 gig on my SSD! – Sjakelien Mar 23 '16 at 05:59
  • @Sjakelien Folder well-labeled then – Bradley Thomas Feb 22 '17 at 14:00
  • (null) ((null)) is the result of an Xcode bug. It gets created when the connected device is no longer available and Xcode then realises and treats the device as null. – Nagendra Rao Apr 05 '17 at 10:18
  • In my case, since I could not get another cable at the time, I deleted the matching device folder and moved the cables, as mentioned in [other posts](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25915846/xcode-stuck-with-copying-symbol-files), cable failures affect this. It was just stuck after many minutes (> 30), then after deleting the folder, it worked in around 5. – Efren Aug 21 '17 at 03:59
  • I've literally googled this so many times and referenced your answer too many times to count. Now gonna keep that folder in my sidebar. +1 excellent answer. – Jordan H Apr 19 '18 at 21:07
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xCode just copy all crashes logs. If you want to speed-up: delete number of crash reports after you analyze it, directly in this window.

Devices -> View Device Logs -> All Logs

screenshot

WINSergey
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In my case symbolicating was take forever. I force restart my phone with both of on/off and home button. Now quickly finished symbolicating and I am starting run my app via xcode.

Savas Adar
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I know that this is not a technical solution but I had my iphone connected with the computer by cable and disconnecting the device from the computer and connecting it again (by cable again) worked for me as I could not solved it with the solutions that are provided before.

Francisco Romero
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  • That may have been lucky timing... or a delayed reaction to other actions you took. I disconnected and reconnected and it went back into this mode until it had finished. – Paul Masri-Stone Apr 27 '17 at 10:55
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It compares crash logs retrieved from the device to archived (symbolized to be correct) version of your applications to try to retrieved where on your code the crash occurred.

Look at xcode symbol file location for details

Community
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Jerome Diaz
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Annoying error. I solved it by plugging the cable directly into the iPad. For some reason the process would never finish if I had the iPad in Apple's pass-through stand.

GoldenJoe
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    It's an error because it would NEVER complete if I had it in the stand. – GoldenJoe Oct 27 '15 at 20:49
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    I recognize the answer is poorly expressed, but it was indeed right for me, connecting directly to the usb port resolved for me, despite the usb-hub was working fine for any other task – jalone Jul 12 '16 at 10:44
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Add SDK version correspond to your iPhone iOS, eg: iOS 10.3

path:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport

It's downloading. When it's finished, it's OK. As shown in the figure:

enter image description here

Yassine ElBadaoui
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GeekMeng
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