UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#1

Post by ryanipete » Fri, May 26, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

UIDebuggingInformationOverlay
ryanipete.com

Re: UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#2

Post by gallerdude » Fri, May 26, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

Not surprised all that much of Apple's hidden tools. I'd totally sign a NDA in order to see the hidden past of Apple.

Re: UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#3

Post by mchrome » Fri, May 26, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

Pretty cool. Hopefully they make it public in the next developer release.

Re: UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#4

Post by jclardy » Fri, May 26, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

I wonder when this was actually added, maybe it is getting ready for an actual release in iOS 11 later this year.

Re: UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#5

Post by smilliken » Fri, May 26, 2017, 7:04 PM UTC

> be sure that the code doesn’t make it into your App Store build, else you’re likely to get rejected.

Doesn't appear to be the case! Here's a list of 611 apps using this class: https://mixrank.com/appstore/apps?expiration=2017-06-26&list...

Notably, it looks like Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Uber are all using it (or have a dependency that is). There's been a handful that were using it since early 2015, and a surge of several hundred towards the end of last year.

Here's the other related classes:

    UIDebuggingInformationRootTableViewController
    UIDebuggingInformationTopLevelViewController
    UIDebuggingInformationValue
    UIDebuggingInformationValueTableViewCell
    UIDebuggingInformationValueViewObserver
    UIDebuggingInformationViewController
    UIDebuggingInformationValueView
    UIDebuggingInformationOverlay
    UIDebuggingInformationValueViewNumber

Re: UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#6

Post by vshni02 » Fri, May 26, 2017, 7:20 PM UTC

Flex does same + more (network logs) https://github.com/Flipboard/FLEX

Re: UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#7

Post by saidajigumi » Fri, May 26, 2017, 7:36 PM UTC

Related to this, I'll highly recommend Reveal[1], a macOS app which allows for (semi-)live view debugging of iOS apps. Reveal provides view hierarchy info, and renders it on (the mac's) screen in a highly inspectable way.

Specifically, both flat 2D and a really great 3D exploded renderings of the active views are available. This is really brilliant for acquiring a deeper understanding of many initially opaque aspects of iOS view construction.

Likewise, the inspectors let you tweak and adjust autolayout constraint values, frames, bounds, and other view settings live. All together, working with Reveal restores a refreshing amount of the ease of view debugging and iteration speed that I love about working with modern in-browser debugging.

[1] https://revealapp.com/

Re: UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#8

Post by ryanipete » Fri, May 26, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

smilliken wrote: post #5

> be sure that the code doesn’t make it into your App Store build, else you’re likely to get rejected. Doesn't appear to be the case! Here's a list of 611 apps using this class: https://mixrank.com/appstore/apps?expiration=2017-06-26&list... Notably, it looks like Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Uber are all using it (or have a dependency that is). There's been a handful that were using it since early 2015, and a surg…

Interesting! I just assumed.

Re: UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#9

Post by CodeWriter23 » Fri, May 26, 2017, 7:59 PM UTC

Dude! You win HN for the week, at least in the eyes of this guy, currently iOS developer guy. Just yesterday I was thinking to myself, how I needed some kind of tool to help me visualize the view hierarchy. I ended up setting different background colors on various views to understand my problem.

Thank you.

Re: UIDebuggingInformationOverlay

#10

Post by disposition2 » Fri, May 26, 2017, 8:00 PM UTC

Just a note about your site. The 'Website' link on the left pane, it seems to 404 on just about every page. It looks like it is a relative link, rather than static because the domain is getting appended to the end of each source URL.

Neat find.