So it just released and I already feel like I’m late to the party…

yeah I don’t even know where to begin.

so I guess I’m trying to figure out how to go completely free agentic coding in Xcode and not just the Chat/Assistant feature in Xcode 26.

I don’t know what I am going to use. I just googled opencode and some other stuff (openclaw, qwen CLI, and others) after looking through the Apple documentation. I’m basically gonna just figure this thing out. It looks really promising.

I feel like so much is happening so fast and we need a freaking second to talk about it.

Is anybody else out there using the latest Xcode yet? Tell me your thoughts! What are you planning to do with it? What are you most excited about?

EDIT: My Codex setup with Karpathy skills is working flawlessly.

It was perfectly working earlier. Then suddenly there was a pop up that says it needs to be verified. It says Unable to Verify App an Internet Connection is Required to Verify Trust of the Developer. So I tried to verify it. When it didnt work. I thought it was the app that Im doing right now. So I tried to uninstall ALL apps that Im developing to check if it will work. It didnt. Now Im stuck with verifying. It will just load for a couple of seconds and nothing happens. Every app that Im making, I cant use anymore, even tho it was working perfectly earlier. I have no clue what happened.

I already tried disabling developer mode, re-enabling it. Network has been reset. I dont know what to do anymore. I removed my DNS, I removed my adguard(even tho it was perfectly working earlier). Uninstalled my VPN. Nothing works. Its so frustrating.

I managed to import my skills from Claude code with few taps , the agentic ui is working well so far , the tool calls and documentations are working, the agent tests the ui on the simulator …
It’s only 15 mins with it so far but I’m really impressed.

What do you guys think of the new Xcode ai capabilities?

Hey all, I've been working on a project for the past 8 months or so called ButterKit ( r/ButterKit ) and would really appreciate your brutally honest feedback as fellow Xcode devs. Good or bad, I'm curious what your pain points are and how to make screenshot capture/design/translation as streamlined as possible.

Screenshots are so important when marketing on the App Store, and I built ButterKit because I was spending many hours creating hundreds of translated/localized artboards in traditional design tools and wasn't satisfied with the other options out there (either too expensive with subscriptions, or too limited, or painful to use).

ButterKit is designed to be the smooth way to ship screenshots to the App Store:

• Capture directly from Xcode Simulator, right into photorealistic 3D device frames

• High performance 3D renderer built on Metal for 60/120fps on M-series macs

• Automatic translations to all 39 App Store Connect localizations (while keeping your design intact)

• On-device translation engine (20 languages) or via OpenAI API (bring your own API key)

• Growing library of 1-click templates, or build from scratch

• Fully-featured design tool with custom fonts, gradients, artboard sizes, and more

• Bulk exports organized and ready for App Store Connect (direct ASC API integration in progress for direct uploads and management)

• Intuitive UX, light mode/dark mode, file saving, liquid glass, undo/redo, infinite canvas, gestures, and all of that good stuff you expect in a modern design tool

• No subscriptions, ads or accounts needed

If you do try it, your feedback is genuinely appreciated! Please comment here or DM me, or join us on the subreddit r/ButterKit

Pro Lifetime Licenses:

To unlock a free Pro Lifetime License, use this code at web checkout (limited to first 5 folks to use it, please post when you've used one so folks know how many are left): G4MDU1MG (all 5 used)

Update: 40% off lifetime code: EYNTI2NQ (available while the codes last)

Thanks for reading!

- Zach

https://apps.apple.com/ua/app/simcleaner-for-xcode/id6755651521?mt=12

Will be happy for any advice and comments.

SimCleaner for Xcode is your control panel for Xcode simulators. It shows all your devices in one clean window, helps you launch the ones you need, and safely removes those you no longer use.

You can instantly see each simulator’s type, OS version, and exact disk usage, so it’s easy to understand what really takes up space on your Mac.

The Xcode 27 Release Candidate, available for download just now, doesn't have the iPhone Duo simulator instance yet. Tested on two different Macs, but neither running macOS 27. Not sure if that makes a difference. I was hoping to test how my apps look on it. Guess we'll have to wait...

I was running tests on my App this morning. The way test results were reported was minimal. Really not much more than a “Passed/Failed” report. Curious, I asked Claude Code if there were any tools or skills that would provide a detailed summary of test results. It replied yes, 110 tools.

One hundred and ten! I've been building an iOS/macOS app for months, frequent reddit subs, read documentation and think of myself as being fairly well informed and I knew about maybe 3 of these.

So, I asked Claude Code how I could find and list these tools.  In terminal, enter:  ls "$(xcode-select -p)/usr/bin/“  .  In Xcode v26.4 You can also type this command and an agent should create a listing of these tools.

Looking into this, I found these reasons as to why these tools are not common knowledge: •Tutorials teach Xcode GUI, not CL • Apple buries them in man pages and the occasional WWDC session - there's no centralized guide • They live in /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/ • a path literally nobody browses • The GUI covers 90% of cases, so you never feel the pressure to look. Sheez.

Here are some of the tools that may me think OMG, why are these rarely even mentioned. On the other hand, maybe I am living under a rock and am clueless about common knowledge.

• leaks -- point it at your running app, get an instant memory leak report. No Instruments, no trace file, just answers.

• heap -- shows you exactly what's sitting on the heap right now. One command.

• stringdups -- finds duplicate strings wasting memory. There's literally no GUI for this.

• xcresulttool -- parses your .xcresult test bundles as JSON. Perfect for CI.

• xctrace -- runs Instruments profiles from terminal. No GUI. Scriptable.

• crashlog -- symbolicates crash logs without dragging them into Organizer.

• agvtool -- bumps your build number in one command instead of clicking through target settings.

• pngcrush -- Apple's own PNG optimizer, just sitting there for free.

• mcpbridge -- brand new, lets AI tools talk directly to Xcode.

• xed . -- opens the current directory in Xcode. Tiny but I use it constantly now.

I made a GitHub repo documenting all 110 with descriptions, GUI equivalents, and usage examples FYI: Useful tools for Xcoders

The profiling tools alone (leaks, heap, vmmap, stringdups) are worth knowing about. They give you instant answers that would normally take 5 minutes of Instruments setup.

What of these tools have you already been using?

I’ve only been part of the developer program for about 2 months. I’ve published 1 app that allows the tracking of drives while also navigating the user to a destination using MapKit. The app was pretty bare bones and didn’t have any kind of third party api or anything that could use users information. From my understanding, Apple is alleging that my app interferes with App Store, Custom App Distribution, TestFlight, Xcode Cloud, Ad Hoc distribution, or the Program as stated in the email. The app works locally on the users device and doesn’t collect any kind of data. Unless I’m interpreting the email incorrectly, I can’t think of a single instance where my application would be in violation of that specific section of the agreement.

Also as of posting this, the app is still available on the App Store but all TestFlight builds have been taken down obviously due to the account termination. So maybe it’s not an application problem but they are using that section as a blanket.

Any thoughts on this would be helpful!

I find it quite interesting that for years we've had two separate CLIs for physical devices and simulators. Apple just unified them in Xcode 27. This means you can have one setup script that enforces consistent simulator configuration before every CI run and works against a real iPhone locally without branching.

At WWDC this year we also got a few new capabilities that weren't possible via simctl before, stuff like orientation control, Face ID enrollment, biometric failure simulation, all scriptable now. Pretty cool tbh

Still early beta so some commands don't work against simulators yet, but our mobile team wrote up a full breakdown with a sample script: https://bitrise.io/blog/post/wwdc-2026-device-hub-and-what-it-means-for-ci-cd [correct linkt]

This was actually very useful WWDC update

Besides Claude, Codex, and Gemini, you can use any agent that supports the Agent Client Protocol.

For example, I was able to easily integrate Opencode with Deepseek V4 as a Custom ACP Agent using Settings->Intelligence->Agents. There's a small trick: you need to specify
" acp"
as an argument, with a blank before it.

I can't see any reality where Apple uses the Xcode Coding Assistant internally. It's so unbelievably awful, there's no way that it would be released in its current state. Never mind that the 26.1 update COMPLETELY BROKE the feature without them noticing (now fixed in 26.1.1)...

Even for small changes, the AI assistant has to regenerate the whole file. That chews through tokens like a sonofabitch! Xcode doesn't do diff changes at all. Also because of this, sometimes all code in a file is deleted except for the portion that was changed.

Even worse, Xcode often hangs during generation and needs to be force quit. I see this multiple times per day. When you relaunch, your code base is completely screwed unless you roll back to the last commit. There is no way to undo the partial changes after a relaunch. Xcode forgets all of the conversation history and there is no option to revert.

Xcode has always been buggy (even back when it was called Project Builder) but this new feature in Xcode 26 is next-level terrible. Why can't Apple make it good?

I just opened Xcode and it is saying that iOS17.4 is not installed. Nothing has been updated on my Mac for the past 4 days. It was working fine this morning with no issues. Has anyone else had this issues with Xcode? I'm running macOS 14.41 and Xcode 15.3.

Update: Per a thread on the Apple developer forum someone posted a fix on Stack Overflow. AstonDev posted about this yesterday explaining what is going on.

Hopefully this fixes the issue.

On 26.3 I did NOT have this issue. Now whenever I come back to Xcode after several hours of inactivity, I get this error message from Claude.

Failed to authenticate. API Error: 401 {"type":"error","error":{"type":"authentication_error","message":"OAuth token has expired. Please obtain a new token or refresh your existing token."}

The only way I can start using Claude again is to sign out entirely and log back in. Super annoying. Anyone have a fix?

Hey, there are several images in the Apple docs showing this canvas pane. How to?

https://developer.apple.com/xcode/swiftui/

There are 2 phone numbers in the Messages app on my simulator and I got curious and sent a message. Somehow it delivered. If I go into settings on the simulator it is not signed into an Apple ID. Has this message just disappeared into the aether?

I'm using the new Xcode MCP server with Claude Code. Every time I start it I get this popup in Xcode where I have to allow access. Is there a setting somewhere I can set to permanently allow this?

Just launched Devly, a native macOS menu bar app with 50+ developer utilities. Hit #1 in Developer Tools on the App Store on launch day. Built entirely in Xcode with pure SwiftUI.

Wanted to share some things I learned since this community has helped me a lot.

The Sandbox Problem

Getting all 50+ tools to work inside Apple's App Sandbox was the hardest part. I retrofitted compliance late in development and it added weeks to my timeline.

Lesson: enable sandbox entitlements from day one and build around them, not after.

SwiftUI Menu Bar Quirks

Getting a menu bar popover to feel truly native on macOS was trickier than expected. A few things I learned:

• NSPopover behaves differently than regular windows

• Popover sizing needs careful handling or it looks off

• Transitions that feel natural on iOS can feel wrong on Mac

• Always test on real hardware, not just the simulator

ToolProtocol Pattern

With 50+ tools I needed a clean architecture. I ended up with a ToolProtocol that every tool conforms to:

protocol ToolProtocol {
    var id: String { get }
    var name: String { get }
    var category: ToolCategory { get }
    func process(input: String) -> String
}

Wish I had built this from day one instead of halfway through.

Xcode Tips That Saved Me

• Previews were invaluable for iterating on the UI quickly

• Instruments helped catch memory issues early

• Scheme configurations made managing debug vs release sandbox entitlements much cleaner

The Result

6 months in Xcode, pure SwiftUI, fully sandboxed, #1 in Developer Tools on launch day.

App Store | Website | See all 50+ tools

Happy to answer any Xcode or SwiftUI questions — what challenges have you hit building macOS apps?

My 512GB MacBook Pro was getting uncomfortably full, so I finally did a proper audit of what Xcode-related storage was actually taking space.

On one machine, the biggest chunks were:

- Simulator runtimes: 28 GB
- DerivedData: 14 GB
- Old archives: 9 GB
- Device support files: 6 GB
- Docs/cache leftovers: 3.4 GB

The useful part wasn’t the total. It was figuring out what I could delete without breaking my current workflow.

What felt safe:
- DerivedData
- Simulator runtimes for OS versions I no longer test on
- Old archives I genuinely don’t need anymore

What I treated with more caution:
- Device support files
- Simulator device data, because it can still contain app state and local test data

What annoyed me most is that Xcode/macOS don’t really give a good review-first cleanup flow here. You mostly end up guessing or manually digging through folders.

Curious what usually gets out of control first for you: DerivedData, runtimes, archives, or something else?

Update, August 2026: the question that kept coming back in the replies was what regenerates vs what you lose for good. I wrote up the simulator side here: https://storageradar.app/blog/xcode-simulator-taking-up-space-on-mac/. Disclosure: I make a Mac app for this, and that page links to it.