Objective-C IDEs & Tools

This section documents modern Objective-C as implemented by Apple Clang in the current Xcode release — Objective-C 2.0 plus ARC, literals and subscripting, instancetype, Clang modules, lightweight generics, nullability and @available — as published at Apple Developer Documentation and the Clang Objective-C specifications, which are the references these pages are written and verified against.

This content was generated with the assistance of AI and should be verified against developer.apple.com before being relied on in production.

This section’s bibliography lists the reference material consulted while preparing these pages.

This page lists the IDEs and tools commonly used to write and debug Objective-C code. Xcode is the standard environment on Apple platforms, so the choice is mostly about what else you add around it.

IDEs

  • Xcode — Apple’s IDE, with the Apple Clang toolchain, Interface Builder, the debugger, Instruments and the simulators.

Discontinued products

  • AppCode — the JetBrains IDE for Objective-C and Swift is discontinued; Xcode is the recommended environment.

See also