As iOS developers, we always tend to use an actual device for testing during app development. A real device can provide an actual hardware environment similar to the production release, it also gives us a better idea about the UI / UX of our app.
However, there are certain times where iOS simulator truly shines, one of them is when debugging complex animation. The “Slow Animations” feature of a simulator can drastically reduce the app animation speed, allowing developers to clearly see the animation’s transition.
Since Xcode 12 (or maybe earlier), the shortcut to enable/disable “Slow Animations” (⌘T) is no longer available.
This is a real bummer!
Being able to swap between slow and normal animation speed quickly can really increase the developers’ productivity during complex animation development.
In this article, I would like to show you how to re-enable this useful shortcut step-by-step. Due to the fact that the iOS simulator is not an app installed in your mac (it is bundled within Xcode), the trick that I am going to show you will be a little bit different from the usual trick to create a custom macOS shortcut.
With all that being said, let’s dive into the details.
#1. Open System Preferences
Let’s start by opening the system preferences. In case you don’t know how, On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences…
#2. Open Keyboard Preferences
Within the system preferences window, go ahead and select “Keyboard” to open the keyboard preferences window.
#3. Open Custom Shortcuts Dialog
In the keyboard preferences window, choose the “Shortcuts” tab, select “App Shortcuts” on the left and then press the add button (+) at the bottom.
#4. Choose the Desired Application
This is the part where it gets a little bit tricky. As you know, the iOS simulator is bundled within Xcode, therefore you will not be able to select it in the “Application” pop-up menu.
To work around this situation, you must first get the iOS simulator pathname, then locate the iOS simulator in the “Application” pop-up menu using pathname.
Get the iOS Simulator Pathname
Go ahead and launch your Xcode and then fire up the simulator via Xcode > Open Developer Tool > Simulator. Next, right-click the iOS simulator icon on the dock, choose Options > Show in Finder.
Lastly, select the Simulator App in the finder window and press ⌥⌘C (option + command + C) to copy the simulator pathname to the clipboard.
Select iOS Simulator as Desired Application
Head back to the custom shortcuts dialog, click on the “Application” pop-up menu, scroll to the bottom and select “Other…”.
At this point, you should be presented with the “Open” dialog.
Now, press ⇧⌘G (shift + command + G) to open the “Go to” dialog. Paste the simulator pathname you copied earlier into the text box and click “Go”.
Double click the Simulator App in the “Open” dialog to select it as the desired application.
#5. Fill In the Desired Menu Title
With the tricky part out of the way, you can now fill in the menu title. Make sure to fill in the exact menu command name, for our case it will be “Slow Animations“.
#6. Set the Desired Keyboard Shortcuts
Lastly, click on the “Keyboard Shortcut” text box and press the key combination that you want to use as the “Slow Animations” keyboard shortcut, then click “Add”.
I would recommend you to use the ⌘T (command + T) key combination as it is the default “Slow Animations” shortcut in previous Xcode version.
#7. Test It Out
You can now try to debug your app using the iOS simulator, and press ⌘T to turn on/off the slow animations feature. If you have configured everything correctly, you should see a message being printed in the Xcode console.
Wrapping Up
Using this simple trick, you can basically assign any keyboard shortcuts to any menu commands. Furthermore, you can also use it to overwrite any default keyboard shortcuts that come along with an app.
However, please be aware to not over customize the keyboard shortcuts of your machine. Once you get used to all the customized shortcuts of your own machine, you won’t be able to use other people’s laptops as efficiently as you want to.
I hope you will find this article helpful. If you like this article, feel free to follow me on Twitter, and subscribe to my monthly newsletter.
Thanks for reading. 👨🏻💻
Further Readings
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