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Is there a way in Xcode to find all the places where a method or property has been been called?

In Eclipse, for example, you can right-click a method and select Find references. Is there anything similar in Xcode?

Mark Amery
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Java Ka Baby
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6 Answers6

270
  1. Select the method you're interested in, or position the text cursor within it.
  2. Open the "Related Files" menu via the icon at the top-left of the Editor. (It's the button immediately to the left of the back button).
  3. Go to the "Callers" submenu for a list of all methods that call the selected method, and click any of them to jump to that file and method.

In pictures...

Screenshot of steps 1 and 2 above.

Screenshot of step 3 above

A couple of notes:

  • You can do this for properties too.
  • Note that when you select a calling method from the Callers menu to jump to where your method was called, Xcode highlights only the first call. Each calling method will only show up in the 'Callers' list once, even if it contains many calls to your method. So if you're trying to make some change at every place in your application where a method is called, be careful not to miss some in places where a calling method contains two calls to the method you're interested in.
Mark Amery
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    The default shortcut for bringing up the menu in `^1` so I'm usually able to press `^1, c, enter` to bring up the list. – Peter Theill Nov 21 '13 at 22:27
  • This finds all Callers of the method and the parent implementations. Is there a way to find Callers of *only* this implementation? – Daniel Kaplan May 05 '15 at 23:23
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    @DanielKaplan I would guess not, since in at least some cases the compiler won't have any way of knowing which implementation is to be called. – Mark Amery May 05 '15 at 23:51
  • My method is called `init`, and this brings up any method named `init` as well. Not so smart... – Nathan H Aug 28 '16 at 14:11
  • This is a good way, but sometimes xcode (I currently have 12.5) bugs out and this menu "Related files" only shows "Recent files" and "Locally Modified Files". In that case restart Xcode or use Command+shift+A – Matej P May 11 '21 at 12:02
37

Yes, open the Assistant editor and instead of Counterparts select Callers.

enter image description here

Jason S
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Alex Terente
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    You don't *have* to use the split editor for this, although it may be convenient if you're going to be editing lots of the calling methods in quick succession. See my answer. – Mark Amery Jul 29 '13 at 18:50
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Select function, press cmd-shift-A, "Callers"

enter image description here

Uladzimir
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18

As of XCode 4.5 you can click on "Show find options" within the search field of the Search Navigator. There you can specify "Symbol References"

enter image description here

SystematicFrank
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    This is a slight improvement over a bare search, but it returns *all* references, not just the particular one you're looking for. For instance, if you have a class with a "height" property, searching for symbol references on your height property will return references to all kinds of other height properties you used, so you still have to sift through the results to find the ones you want. For a hack that works fairly nicely see this: http://stackoverflow.com/a/5457479/850721 – Mike Lorenz Apr 13 '13 at 12:59
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Place the insertion point in a method invocation or declaration and choose Find > Find Selected Symbol In Project. For multipart selectors this will only highlight the first part but searching does seem to work relatively reliably. You can also use Find Call Hierarchy which highlights the entire line instead.

The corresponding contextual menu item (Find Selected Symbol in Workspace) also works, but it's a bit trickier to make work properly. Make sure no text gets selected otherwise it'll search for the selected word rather than the entire selector. To do so, you can click with the left mouse button prior to clicking with the right mouse button (or Control-clicking) in the same location. There's no such issue with the contextual Find Call Hierarchy.

Nicholas Riley
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-13

With xcode 4 you can now right click on references and select "jump to definition."

Scott Looze
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