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Xcode 5 now displaced Xcode 4, and one common complaint that I had against both IDEs is that they don't autocomplete very aggressively. In Visual Studio, autocompletion is committed as soon as you hit a non-identifier key (like a parenthesis, a comma, a dot, a space, etc). On Xcode 5, you have to hit tab or enter.

Is there a known way to get a behavior closer to Visual Studio's for autocompletion?

zneak
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  • @zneak Although the answer to this question is no there are two caveats covered as alternatives in my answer. – Tommie C. Oct 29 '13 at 17:32
  • @TommieC. I saw your answer yesterday. You'll understand, however, that this question has been open since 2011, and that at this point, if I wanted to take "no" as an answer, I had more than two years to do so :) With Xcode 3 there was a plugin that made autocompletion okay-ish. I'm still not losing hope that someone will do something similar for Xcode 5. – zneak Oct 29 '13 at 18:13

9 Answers9

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You can select following two options from XCode->Preferences->Text Editing:

  1. Suggest completions while typing.
  2. Enable Type-over completion

Here is the image for your reference.

Mahadev Kale
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You're not listing the other problem, XCode autocompletes by alphabetical values, not compatible ones. Visual Studio actually gives you things that work, but in XCode you can shove an Int to a class or visa-versa thanks to autocomplete.

The options that come closest are in XCode menu->Preferences->Text Editing. However, it doesn't have what you are after. I do notice autocompleting the brackets isn't very intelligent and I may turn mine off soon.

Anyway, the XCode alternative IDE actually has contextual autocomplete, which greatly improves your ability to code without looking at the docs. Unsure what its preferences are but it may be worth looking at. I'm not trying to advertise it so I'll let you google the XCode alternative if you want to.

In practice, the . and , "stopping" autocomplete actually saves me many times. For example, write for(int x = 0; x < 5; x++) {} then try to change the x to a y. Autocomplete will step in and completely throw you off, unless you hit space or . or ,. If you had aggressive autocomplete, it would shove in its nonworking alphabetical value at the top of the list.

Long story short, XCode 4 isn't separate from the rest of the mac, a nightmare when you try to go and use it. For one clear example, take a large text file in TextEdit, and scroll halfway down. Wait a second, now try to highlight half of the document. (Your scroll bar will disappear before you can do anything, for example).

The answer you're looking for may or may not exist, but I hoped to provide you with some alternatives that may satisfy your craving. The example at the end just shows the true nature of the tools and their UI principle.

There's always Monodevelop, (not objective C, but should be more customizable), or perhaps an ide that has Objective C, if you don't mind coding in alternatives.

Good luck, I wish XCode had more customizing too.

Stephen J
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  • I'm actually a long-time Mac user and I find your usability concerns unfounded. I am much more productive with Mac OS than I am on Windows, IDE autocomplete aside. – zneak Nov 30 '12 at 02:27
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    If you don't like the disappearing scrollbar, feel free to go to System Preferences -> General and select "Always" under "Show scroll bars". Other than that, for selecting half the document, you could put your mouse where you want the selection to begin, then press shift+cmd+up to select everything from the beginning of the document to there. – zneak Nov 30 '12 at 02:31
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    Ah, thanks for the pointer! I try to keep my anti-points as use-cases. For example, the Mac just disabled USB power because I plugged my arduino in for more than 5 minutes. Or I have developer mode enabled and cannot install web apps without finding settings, as you described, buried in strange places. You can't show hidden folders without googling the terminal command. XCode has the bugs I stated above, it's far from friendly to developers. Try to find the definition of MKMapRect in the docs... anyway, I will use your tips and appreciate them. Note that we still can't answer the guy's q! – Stephen J Nov 30 '12 at 03:22
  • The guy happens to be me. ;) (Also, you might like this one if you need to deal with invisible folders: you might know how shift+cmd+g lets you navigate to a folder by its path? You can do the same thing inside open and save dialogs.) I'm not saying all that power user stuff is intuitive for power users from other platforms, but as a casual Mac user that grew into a developer, there's nothing I do on Windows that I don't know how to do/do better on Mac OS. (Of course, I keep myself to pretty "standard" development targets, so YMMV if you like less mainstream stuff.) – zneak Nov 30 '12 at 04:25
  • (And again, that excludes a number if IDE quirks. Visual Studio is definitely better than Xcode, but I like Mac OS better than Windows.) – zneak Nov 30 '12 at 04:31
  • hehe, I didn't check name, oops. I do similar, trying to stick to mainstream. Mac has bugs that show up randomly, but always annoy the crap out of me. All text sometimes filters into the search box, no matter what. Windows definitely has more, but Macs seem to take away my ability to be productive. Erasing a core data relationship made XCode crash until I reverted the file... anyway I wanted to say thanks for the tips on invisible folders, and I'll look up the shortcuts to try and get proficient with it. I've read the prog. guides and know the systems pretty well. You've answered my Q's! lol – Stephen J Nov 30 '12 at 18:44
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In xCode the only way to autocomplete is pressing tab key or "ctrl space" to have a list of all methods and variable starting with that char sequence. If you want, you can customize the key shortcut pressing "cmd ," and, in the section "Key Bindings", you can customize it.

Marco Mirisola
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  • Everybody knows that. I was asking if there was a way to autocomplete more aggressively. In Visual Studio and other IDEs, pressing one of ,.(); will select the autocomplete choice. – zneak Sep 18 '13 at 17:42
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Now if you start typing auto-complete will pop up. There is nothing you need to do.
EDIT
Sorry about that. Misunderstood the question. The only way to select autocomplete is by typing a tab, enter, or right arrow key. There is no way to do this in normal XCode.

Prince Agrawal
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charleyh
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  • But it's still not autocompleting the way I would like it. As stated in my question, you have to press enter to select an autocomplete choice. In Visual Studio, you just have to type a character that can't be part of an identifier to select that choice (for instance, enter, space, a parenthese, a comma, a dot, ...) – zneak Nov 13 '12 at 02:24
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The following key binding options are available for code completion. I do not believe there is any way to change the underlying engine to make finding appropriate completions easier, however one could write as many code snippets as desired to quickly reuse code.

Code Completion Shortcuts

Alternative

I prefix my code snippets with my own initials followed by my own logically phrased structures. This presents a pretty useful [faux] index that let's me short-circuit the auto completion routines.

e.g. Structure of a typical user snippet

[tnc][AddMethod][Somename]

When necessary I then start tnc... to gain access to my [faux] index of commonly used snippets.

Snippets are not autocompletion per se but they do provide an alternative index to autocomplete coding and could address the concern of finding relevant information quickly.

Tommie C.
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control+space is probably the only feature I've known. I agree xcode does not have any auto completion that I'm aware off.

But otherwise since visual studio keeps on getting updated most of the time. The auto completion on it works fine. At some point Xcode might add a feature like that on their future updates.

Ricardo
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You can use a key shortcut to show a completion list.

You can press "ctrl + ," and it will show the "visual studio like and feel" list for autocomplete.

Daniel Gomez Rico
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  • It still doesn't commit with the first non-identifier character you type, which is my worst complaint. :/ – zneak Mar 27 '12 at 17:12
  • Ctrl+, does nothing on my version; is that with Xcode 4.3 DP or have I changed something at some point? – zneak Mar 30 '12 at 17:20
  • meh, I didn't realize Xcode 4.3 was out. I'll download it and try again. – zneak Mar 30 '12 at 17:33
  • `^,` definitely does nothing for me (even with Xcode 4.3). The [Xcode cheat sheet](http://www.1729.us/xcode/Xcode%20Shortcuts.png) I found doesn't list this shortcut either. Am I missing something? – zneak Mar 31 '12 at 17:37
  • The + is not the char that you must press, you must press ctrl AND , – Daniel Gomez Rico Apr 05 '12 at 16:15
  • I figured that out. I am pressing ctrl and the comma key, and Xcode just does a "beep". When I looked in my bindings preferences, this key combination was not used for anything. There was ctrl+space bound to "Show completions", but no traces of ctrl+,. "Show completions" waits that I press 'enter' to commit my choice. – zneak Apr 05 '12 at 16:29
  • well, I have Xcode 4.3.2 now. As the question title indicates, I'm looking for Xcode 4 answers. – zneak Apr 16 '12 at 17:18
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    @Daneil, the display is fine, but the behavior is not the same as Visual Studio's C# or C++ autocompletion. With Visual Studio, when you highlight an entry, inserting any character that can't be part of an identifier (like a dot, a space, a parenthesis, a comma, etc.) will commit the autocomplete. Under Xcode, it doesn't. – zneak Apr 18 '12 at 15:56
  • Now I understand, sorry, I dont know – Daniel Gomez Rico Apr 18 '12 at 16:49
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I don't know if this works with xCode 4 though, but its worth a try http://code.google.com/p/xcode-auto-assistant/

Konrad77
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  • The Xcode plugin API is private and has changed between Xcode 3 and Xcode 4. It's pretty much bound to crash, but thanks anyways. – zneak Mar 11 '11 at 17:23
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If you want to complete the same things every time you could use third party software like text expander for this or use Snow Leopards integrated textreplacement feature.

Denshi
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    The whole point of autocompletion is to provide contextual suggestions. "Normal text" autocompleters can't do this. – zneak Apr 13 '11 at 14:32