Xcode built-in snippets edit

Question

Is there a way to edit Xcode\'s built-in snippets? There is an edit button, but pressing it doesn\'t seem to allow changing the snippet\'s text.

Any insight is appr

Answer 1

You can edit the Xcode system snippets using a text editor and knowing the location of the system code snippets file. In Xcode 5.1.1 the location of the system code snippets file has changed once again to:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Frameworks/IDEKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SystemCodeSnippets.codesnippets

and you must have root privileges to edit the plist file in place because its owner and permissions are as follows:

$ ls -l /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Frameworks/IDEKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SystemCodeSnippets.codesnippets
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  190 May 16 18:23 /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Frameworks/IDEKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SystemCodeSnippets.codesnippets

The plist dictionary keys are pretty self-explanatory and for the IDECodeSnippetIdentifier key, you can generate UUIDs yourself using for example the command:

$ uuidgen
42F6B133-5DA3-41DB-8874-4E10E447F723

Once you've edited the file using for instance sudo and your editor of choice, you have to restart Xcode in order to pick up your changes.

Happy hacking!