117

What is 'Multi-cursor editing' in Xcode 10 editor. (more information about the same is mentioned in release notes but unable to understand.)

How exactly does it work?

3
  • 3
    its used for allowing to quickly edit multiple ranges of code at once Commented Jun 5, 2018 at 9:48
  • 2
    Good question actually. I found this twitter post on this matter that seems to talk about some third party plug-in / workaround. I'm not sure how to enter that editing mode, however. Commented Jun 5, 2018 at 9:49
  • 3
    See developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/102/?time=2518 for a quick demo Commented Jun 5, 2018 at 11:07

5 Answers 5

225

To edit multiple instances of text within different sections of a document, you can use multi-cursor editing. This allows multiple cursors to be placed in different spots so text can be added, modified, or deleted.

its the name of Source Editor, for reference purpose I taken the answer from whats-new-in-xcode10 and Sample link 1 and Sample link 2

The Xcode 10 Source Editor now supports multi-cursor editing allowing you to quickly edit multiple ranges of code at once.

  • shift + control + click
  • shift + control +
  • shift + control +
  • option + drag

With a source control-enabled project the source editor displays changes made by a developer in the gutter and shows changes made by other developers that haven’t yet been pulled into the project

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

10 Comments

@MarcusJ - I modified the answer, its easy to understand, for sample you get here
I wish they would have just done command + click like Sublime.
@Dan just change the keyboard shortcut for "Select Next Occurrence" to Cmd + D in preferences :)
To select Multiple lines simply use "Shift + Ctrl + Drag" in Xcode10, which could achieve by "Cmd + Drag" earlier ✌️✌️✌️✌️
@Dan, Check out my answer.
|
36

The best way to use it is by using the Select Next Occurrence command from the Find menu.

Its default keyboard shortcut is alt + cmd + e, but you could set it to cmd + d to mimic Sublime Text's behavior.

This way, you can edit code lines that are different, whereas the solutions in the other answers only allow you to edit similar lines.

For example, if you have this code:

NSString *myStringg = @"stringg"; // print the stringg NSLog(@"Here is my stringg: %@", myStringg); 

you simply:

  1. manually select the first Stringg occurrence from the first line using the cursor
  2. hit the Select Next Occurrence's keyboard shortcut 4 times
  3. hit the right arrow key
  4. hit backspace

and you'll have:

NSString *myString = @"string"; // print the string NSLog(@"Here is my string: %@", myString); 

Comments

19

Usages

(1) Edit CodingKey

using Option ⌥ + drag

demo-1

(2) Edit method parameter indentation

using Shift ⇧ + Control ⌃ + click

demo-2

Related Defaults

$ defaults write com.apple.dt.Xcode PegasusMultipleCursorsEnabled -bool true 

Reference

  1. https://sarunw.com/posts/multi-cursor-editing-in-xcode/
  2. https://github.com/ctreffs/xcode-defaults
  3. Mac keyboard shortcuts https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236

Comments

6

Shift + Ctrl + click when you wish to edit same text in file for multiple times e.g

 option_A.isEnabled = false option_B.isEnabled = false option_C.isEnabled = false option_D.isEnabled = false 

in this i have to put true on all four lines then it should be better for to put true at once by using shift + control + click rather than edit each line

Comments

2

There is also a keyboard shortcut available for those like me who use cmd + Shift + L in Sublime.

It's called Selection - Split Selection By Lines. I set it to cmd + Shift + L but I had to set the Show Library shortcut to something else random that I don't use to resolve the conflict.

1 Comment

For me Select All Find Matches instead of Selection - Split Selection By Lines worked.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.