Hacknicity

• Your favorite Xcode projects, workspaces, playgrounds and Swift files are listed first.
• Selecting a bookmark opens it in Xcode.
• Hold the Option key when selecting a bookmark to show its location in Finder.
• The order, names and optional submenu groupings are fully configurable.
• Configure custom icons for your bookmarks using Finder’s File->Get Info window. See Change icons for files or folders on Mac for information on how to do this.
• Open Xcode’s recent files even if Xcode isn’t running. Only your bookmarks are shown.
• Launch Xcode directly from the menu. If multiple versions are installed, choose which.
• Open the Preferences window.
• A link to this User Guide.
• An About window which shows the app version and some credits.
• An link to the App Store to leave a rating or review (which would be very much appreciated).
• Quit the app.

• Add project, workspace, playground or Swift files manually or drag & drop from Finder.
• Filenames without spaces are automatically converted to a more human-readable form. When adding a Package.swift file, the name of the parent directory is used.
• Customise the name, order and grouping of bookmarks. Each group becomes a submenu in the main menu.
• If a project is later moved on disk, double click the bookmark or choose Change File… from the contextual menu to update it to the new location.

• View Xcode’s recent files even if Xcode isn’t running. Select a file to open it.
• Only files you’ve added as bookmarks are shown, using your custom names.
• Recent files are sorted by time or name, configured in the Preferences window.
• Hold the Option key to view them in the other order.

Due to the way Xcode records the parent directory of Package.swift files in its recent documents list, XcLauncher is not always able to show recent Swift Package Manager projects. This seems to be related to where the project is located on disk. In my testing it works when the project is somewhere in my home directory but it doesn’t work for projects on my Desktop.

• If only one version of Xcode is installed, select the Open Xcode menu option to open it.
• If multiple versions of Xcode are installed, the Open Xcode submenu lists them all.

In order to appear in the menu, Xcode versions need to have “Xcode” somewhere in their filename (in any case) and must be located in a folder that XcLauncher can read without any special permissions (e.g. /Applications).

The Mac App Store version of Xcode should not be renamed because an update will probably change it back to the default Xcode.app.

Specific versions of Xcode can be downloaded from developer.apple.com/download/all. I recommend renaming the downloaded Xcode.app to include the version number in the filename, then moving it to /Applications. It is important to do this before opening that Xcode app version for the first time. More information can be found in my Medium article Working with Multiple Versions of Xcode.

Note: Xcode sometimes gets confused when multiple versions are being run simultaneously (and so will you!) I recommend quitting Xcode and the simulator before switching to a different Xcode version.

There are some preferences that affect XcLauncher’s behaviour and appearance.

XcLauncher can automatically start at login.

A keyboard shortcut can be configured to open XcLauncher’s menu:

• Press the Record Shortcut button and press the key combination you want to configure.
• Choose a key combination that is not already used by the system or has an existing meaning within another application. Using two or more modifier keys helps avoid problems. For example, ^⌥⌘X could be used for opening the menu.

The first ten files in either the top-level bookmarks menu or the Open Recent menu are assigned ⌘1 to ⌘0 keyboard shortcuts.

Xcode’s recent files can be sorted by either last opened time or name. When the Open Recent menu is open, hold the Option key to view files sorted in the other order.