The Utilities Pane in Xcode

The Utilities pane is the column at the right of the project window. It contains inspectors that provide information about the current selection or its settings; if those settings can be changed, this is where you change them. It also contains libraries that function as a source of objects you may need while editing your project. The Utilities pane’s impor‐ tance emerges mostly when you’re editing a .storyboard or .xib file. But it can be useful also while editing code, because Quick Help, a form of documentation , is displayed here as well, plus the Utilities pane is the source of code snippets. To toggle the visibility of the Utilities pane, choose View → Utilities → Hide/Show Utilities (Command-Option-0). You can change the Utilities pane’s width by dragging the vertical line at its left edge.

The Utilities pane consists of numerous palettes, which are clumped into multiple sets, which are themselves divided into two major groups: the top half of the pane and the bottom half of the pane. You can change the relative heights of these two halves by dragging the horizontal line that separates them.
The top half
What appears in the top half of the Utilities pane depends on what’s selected in the current editor. There are three main cases:
A code file is being edited
The top half of the Utilities pane shows either the File inspector or Quick Help. Toggle between them with the icons at the top of this half of the Utilities pane, or with their keyboard shortcuts (Command-Option-1, Command-Option-2). The File inspector is rarely needed, but Quick Help can be useful as documen‐ tation. The File inspector consists of multiple sections, each of which can be expanded or collapsed by clicking its header.
A .storyboard or .xib file is being edited
The top half of the Utilities pane shows, in addition to the File inspector and Quick Help, the Identity inspector (Command-Option-3), the Attributes in‐ spector (Command-Option-4), the Size inspector (Command-Option-5), and the Connections inspector (Command-Option-6). These can consist of mul‐ tiple sections, each of which can be expanded or collapsed by clicking its header.
An asset catalog is being edited
In addition to the File inspector and Quick Help, the Attributes inspector (Command-Option-4) lets you determine which variants of an image are listed.
The bottom half
The bottom half of the Utilities pane shows one of four libraries. Toggle between them with the icons at the top of this half of the Utilities pane, or with their keyboard shortcuts. They are the File Template library (Command-Option-Control-1), the Code Snippet library (Command-Option-Control-2), the Object library (Command-Option-Control-3), and the Media library (Command-Option- Control-4). The Object library is the most important; you’ll use it heavily when editing a .storyboard or .xib file.
To see a help pop-up describing the currently selected item in a library, press Spacebar.