Xcode 15 Bookmarks Feature

Xcode 15 has a new Bookmarks feature that looks like it will be really handy.

You can create a bookmark anywhere in code, and it’ll be tracked in a new Navigator in the left panel. I do this quite a lot just now with Breakpoints; I don’t actually want a debugger breakpoint, I just want to be able to quickly jump to certain points in the code that I’m working on. But breakpoints are really annoying because I can either stop a lot when running code, or disable breakpoints. Bookmarks are exactly what I need.

You can add notes to bookmarks, and those will be highlighted in the source editor too. Like todo comments for example. So while browsing both the navigator and the code, you can see why you bookmarked that point.

Search Results

You can also bookmark search results, effectively creating saved searches. I often find myself repeating the same two or three searches a lot in a short period of time, so having the ability to save them rather than rerunning a lot will be great.

In work, we often leave Jira ticket references in comments if we know we have some upcoming work in an area of code. For example if we’ve identified a code improvement but don’t have time to do the refactor now. Or if I am implementing a new feature in chunks, I’ll often leave some methods unimplemented because they come under a different ticket. So being able to create saved searches for those ticket references, using Bookmarks, will be a great productivity improvement.