Dials is a desktop app for controlling and debugging your iOS app. It has a simple extensible architecture to make it easy for you to add your own plugins. It also comes with several useful built in plugins:

1. A view debugger similar to the Xcode view debugger but it can:

   1. Write properties and not just read them.
   2. Be easily extended to support custom properties for your own views.
   3. Be easily extended for new types of desktop editors.
   4. View the margins between views.

2. A network requests debugger that tells you all about what data your app is sending and receiving.

3. A control panel that lets you connect arbitrary variables to desktop controls like sliders and color pickers and send changes back to your running application. In addition to sending the new values back to your application, you can also save changes directly back to your code with the push of a button.

See it in action:

• Control Panel
• View Debugger
• Network Watcher

Additionally, check out Snaps, a Dials plugin that extends Dials' built in autolayout editor to enable you to save your changes directly back to your source code.

Dials is an unusual project in that it has an iOS component and a desktop component. As such, you can use CocoaPods or Carthage to fetch and version it, but you'll have to perform some additional manual steps afterward.

Add the following to your Podfile:

pod 'Dials', '~> 1.0'

Add the following to your Cartfile:

github "aleffert/Dials"

You can also just add Dials as a submodule directly:

git submodule add Libraries/Dials [email protected]:aleffert/dials.git

Once you have the files downloaded, you will need to do the following:

1. Find Dials.xcodeproj in the Finder and drag it into your project's workspace.

2. Add Dials.framework as a library dependency for your iOS app in the "Build Phases" section of the target settings.

3. Still within "Build Phases", add a "Copy Files" build phase whose "Destination" is "Frameworks" (your project may already have this).

4. Hit the "+" button and add "Dials.framework" to your Copy Files phase.

5. Go to the "Build Settings" pane for your target and ensure "Embedded Content Contains Swift Code" is set to "Yes".

6. Still within the "Build Settings" pane, ensure the "Runtime Search Paths" setting includes @executable_path/Frameworks.

7. Go to your application delegate and inside the applicationDidFinishLaunching method start Dials.

   Objective-C:

   #import <Dials/Dials.h>
   
   - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application 
       didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
   
       ... your code here ...
   
   #if TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR 
       [[DLSDials shared] start];
   #endif
   
       ... your code here ...
   
   }
   

   Swift:

   
   import Dials
   
   func application(application: UIApplication, 
       didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [NSObject : AnyObject]?) -> Bool {
   
       ... your code here ...
   
   #if TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR
       DLSDials.shared().start()
   #endif
   
       ... your code here ...
   
   }
   

Note that we recommend only enabling Dials in simulator builds to prevent you from shipping your app with it enabled.

Once you have Dials configured, you can start it by running your app from Xcode. Then, while your app is still running, choosing the Dials.app scheme from within Xcode and running that at the same time. You can also build Dials.app and afterward, run that executable from the Finder without involving Xcode.

Dials comes with two plugins that require no additional work on your part: The Views plugin and the Network Requests plugin. However, the Views plugin gains additional power if you extend it to support your custom views. See the documentation on supporting custom views for more information.

The Control Panel plugin requires you to declare in your code each control that should appear in the desktop control panel. See the documentation on adding controls to the control panel for more information.

Dials welcomes your contributions for new editors, new plugins, smarter code understanding, or any other cool idea you come up with. We're also always thrilled to see smaller things like bug fixes, documentation improvements, unit tests, or general housekeeping. You're also encouraged to publish free standing Dials plugins like Snaps that aren't part of the core Dials distribution. If you do, please let us know so we can be excited about it!