Can't drag and drop item from storyboard to viewcontroller in xcode

Question

I started working with xcode a few days ago, and today I tried to connect a textview from the main storyboard to the viewcontroller, but I figured out that its not working.

I am able to ctrl+click to drag the item, but unable to place it in both viewcontroller.h and .m. I double checked that its viewcontroller and not UIViewcontroller, so this is not the case.

I'm using a Yosemite 10.10 mac.

Any kind of help would be appreciated.

score 32 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 03 '17 at 07:23

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For beginners -- > make sure you have kept the "Ctrl" key pressed down while dragging and dropping onto the code. This can be easily missed.

answered Oct 03 '17 at 07:23

Abhijith C R

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This helped me! – Chathurika Senani Dec 20 '18 at 06:18
Thanks it is really helped – Vigneswaran A Feb 05 '20 at 09:57
Thank you so much, very short answer yet so helpful! – Asma May 24 '22 at 13:57

score 31 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 16 '15 at 12:59

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Select the ViewController in storyboard and change the name of the ViewController to the name in the .h or .m file and then try ctrl+click and drag enter image description here

answered Jul 16 '15 at 12:59

Suhit Patil

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If this still doesn't work, you might have to reboot xcode once the class is named (that's what I had to do) – Timothé Malahieude Apr 10 '18 at 10:38
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If you do this and it still doesn't work, check the Attributes inspector and make sure the 'User Interaction Enabled' button is selected. This is unselected by default for some classes. – Alexander Aug 13 '18 at 00:29
Thanks. I think apple can make a dialog to give drag and drop a hint. – Abby Chau Yu Hoi Jun 18 '19 at 05:14
I think it’s covered in the documentation somewhere but I agree they should highlight it – Suhit Patil Jul 05 '19 at 19:40
Solved it for me, why isn't this marked as the answer? @Ohad Klein – SEG.Veenstra Oct 14 '19 at 12:51

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 01 '15 at 02:35

For me, the solution was to click on the "View" item in the dropdown menu that shows all the subviews for the controller.

Simply clicking on the controller image on the storyboard does not appear to properly "select" the controller for drag and drop abilities, the base view must be selected.

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 29 '16 at 19:31

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Make sure you're in Assistant Editor Mode (When code and layout editor are side-by-side).

From Apple:

With Interface Builder open in the standard editor pane, select the control you want to configure, and click the Assistant Editor button () in the workspace toolbar. The assistant editor opens your object’s implementation file.

Control-drag from the control in Interface Builder to the implementation file. (In the screenshot, the assistant editor displays the implementation file of the view controller for the Warrior button.) Xcode indicates where you can insert an action method in your code.

answered Sep 29 '16 at 19:31

Alan

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This is the correct solution! :) Some gotchas. Firstly, it opens the .m file by default. To counter this less than bright design, click Automatic in the breadcrumb path at the top of the pane. The dropdown will have 2 choices, .h and .m. After some fiddling you'll have set all of it up to perform the awesome drag operation. Secondly, don't drag from ring to ring: drag from the Inspector ring to the code line next to the ring. I counted 22 clicks and drag for something that could have been replaced with a single dropdown. Am I allowed to say Jesus Christ in here? Jesus Christ. – Henrik Erlandsson Feb 03 '17 at 14:08
In a sea of meaningless shapes, and inspectors that are probably minimised, would it be possible for someone to post a screenshot of what this looks like, with a big arrow pointing to where the Assistant Editor button is? – Graham Leggett Feb 22 '22 at 23:49

Mesut GUNES · Answer 5 · 2021-01-09T10:09:00.910

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For anyone who is new to XCode this picture might help more:

Select the item in Main.storyboard from the right pane and then set the class for the view in the right pane. Now you can ctrl + drag into your class

edited Jan 09 '21 at 10:09

answered Jan 08 '21 at 22:33

Mesut GUNES

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score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 26 '21 at 16:48

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After trying all of the other answers, what finally fixed this issue for me is simply restarting Xcode and I was able to see the blue line that indicates where I can place my action method...

answered Jun 26 '21 at 16:48

FelipePerla

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This was true for me in Xcode 13.2.1. I was connecting between a View in Interface Builder and a NSViewController in a `.swift` file. – nishanthshanmugham May 02 '22 at 11:34

score 1 · Answer 7 · edited Jul 19 '19 at 04:06

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Try selecting your view in the storyboard and clicking on the identity inspector on the right side in class. Enter your view controller name and then drag and drop the item from the storyboard to the view controller.

Hope it helps.

edited Jul 19 '19 at 04:06

shim

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answered Jul 16 '15 at 12:56

Pradumna Patil

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score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 15 '17 at 17:18

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Note that dragging to any point in your code doesn't necessarily work. If you've been unable to drag to create the connection in one spot of your code, try dragging to another spot. For me, I was trying to drag to add a connection in the middle of a function which didn't work. Dragging to the beginning line of a function or in between functions did work.

Note: I'm on Xcode 9.1

answered Nov 15 '17 at 17:18

Ian D. Miller

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I am unable to find this multiple window option in XCode 11 any idea? – Manish Pathak Dec 28 '19 at 07:59
In my case, I was trying to -drag into a file that had an UN-RESOLVED syntax error (in fact it was an incomplete edit), which caused XCode to reject drags even when it was in-between functions. Completing the edit fixed the problem. – gOnZo Feb 21 '20 at 16:54

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Aug 08 '19 at 07:26

I had to both rename the class (from ViewController to ViewController2) of the ViewController.swift file and change the Custom Class (from ViewController to ViewController2) of the Main Storyboard's View Controller to make Ctrl-Drag-and-drop work again.

Renaming back to ViewController from ViewController 2 in ViewController.swift and Main Storyboard did not thwart the Ctrl-Drag-and-drop, it remained working afterward as well.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Jul 16 '15 at 13:20

Hey I think you are not connected your storyboard viewController with your viewController class. check screen shot which "suhit" uploaded in his answer. I would like to tell you something more than it. When ever you need to connect any storyboard object with class.

first go to utility panel (right side) and then set class there.
after that you can connect your controls with class

I hope it will help you.

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Oct 20 '16 at 23:05

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Check that the names on Viewcontroller identity inspector and the .h, .m files are the same. That worked for me

answered Oct 20 '16 at 23:05

nano_dorado

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Feb 20 '18 at 23:11

I'm using Xcode 9.2 I had my ViewControlled refactored into sections using the "extension" keyword. It appears you can't control drag into an extension of a ViewController. If you go up to the top part that is in the class definition, control dragging works fine (assuming you did the other things in this thread about making sure the right class is associated with the view controller.

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Jul 17 '18 at 04:31

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I had same problem, I realised I selected wrong story board. If you made app with default settings you will get two story boards (Main and Launch Screen). Labels on Launch screen story board cannot drag drop.

answered Jul 17 '18 at 04:31

bf39L

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score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Nov 05 '18 at 01:23

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Make sure that the item in question is connected to the file in which you want to control drag it to (specify the class in the identity inspector)

answered Nov 05 '18 at 01:23

Shawn

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Can't drag and drop item from storyboard to viewcontroller in xcode

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