XCode 16 Canvas Preview Won't Work

  • I just downloaded XCode 16.0 and an iOS 18.0 simulator. This simulator works well, and I am also able to view my apps on my iPhone due to the 'XcodePreviews" app on my phone. However, the preview canvas refuses to load. Normally, it would just show itself upon opening the file up in XCode, but now every time I open a project it says "preview paused". When I refresh the canvas, it just loads. The build succeeds and I can view it in the simulator, but not the canvas. This also happens when creating an entirely new project. I would attach my canvas diagnostics report but I am unable to upload a file bigger than 244.140625Kb, so that's impossible to do.

Hi,

Sorry to hear you are having problems getting previews working. This error can often indicate a crash in your application when it launches, or a problem with the simulator. If you look into the folder ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports, do you see any crash reports for your app, anything previews or sim related?

If nothing stands out to you, then best next step will be to file a feedback with diagnostics so we can take a look. Feedbacks support huge files, so the diagnostics should upload fine there.

We will need the diagnostics Xcode Previews generates in order to make sure we understand the error the previews system is encountering.

If you are having issues with Xcode, macOS, catalyst or on-device iOS previews then download and install the logging profile for your device. Instructions and profiles are available here: https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/profiles-and-logs/?name=swift Attach the sysdiagnose to the radar as well as the diagnostics using the instructions below.

Then when you reproduce the problem in Xcode:

  1. Either (a) an error banner will appear, click the "Diagnostics" button in that banner; or (b) if you're not seeing an error but you still want to provide diagnostics you can get the same diagnostics window by going under the Editor menu in the menu bar, then selecting the Canvas submenu, then selecting "Diagnostics".
  2. In the sheet that appears, click "Generate Report" in the bottom left of the sheet
  3. Attach (or make from the folder) the resulting zip file to the bug (will be named something like previews-diagnostics-0123456789.zip)
  4. Generate the sysdiagnose(s) and attach those too

I do also face the same issue, here is my log

i would like to mention that using Legacy Previews Execution Worked for me and it fixed that issue.

~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

If you are able, please try out Xcode 18.1 beta and the iOS 18.1 beta. We're aware of issues that show timeout errors for some package and other libraries and we think we've addressed them but would love confirmation if this fixes your issue.

XCode 16 Canvas Preview Won't Work
 
 
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