As your app grows in size, so does its collection of files. You will add many image assets, styles, and other non-binary content such as videos and PDFs. These files can easily grow beyond what you have room for within the project directory structure, which is where excluded folders come into play.

Exclusion rules let you create special directories that are not included when anyone else in the team or yourself clones the repository. This way you can separate large media files from the rest of the source code, keeping everything organized.

In this article we’ll review how to configure exclusion settings in Xcode 9 and later. Then, we’ll take a look at some best practices for using them effectively.

Open the project navigator

The Project Navigator is your starting place when adding new files or folders to your source code. It allows you to easily add, remove, and organize content within projects for both iOS and macOS apps.

The first thing you will want to do is open the Project Navigator by choosing File > New | Create New Folder or File.

You can then choose whether to create an iPhone app, iPad app, watchOS app, macOS application, or other template depending on what type of app you would like to make.

After that, you can begin adding pages (or screens) to your app. To do this, simply drag one file out of the templates and drop it into the appropriate area in the Project Navigator. You will now have to decide where to put each element!

As we mentioned before, the Team Explorer tab gives you access to all types of content for your app. These include things such as images, videos, fonts, styles, colors, and more. All these items are organized by category so it makes finding something easy.

For example, let’s say you wanted to find some green color schemes for your app.

Open the target editor

In the Target Editor, you will want to open the Devices pane. To do this, click on the Devices button at the top of the window or use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + ALT + U. The Devices pane shows all your devices connected via USB or Thunderbolt as well as any internal storage devices like an SD card or hard drive.

You can also add new device types by clicking “+” next to either the USB or Internal Device Type column. This brings up a menu where you can choose from All, Bluetooth, Camera, Ethernet, NFC, Infrared Receiver, RF Transceiver, SIM Card Reader, Universal Serial Bus (USB) Receive Only, Wi-Fi Direct, and Wireless Display. Click Save when done.

Now that we have our devices organized, it is time to exclude some. You can now easily remove the iPhone 6S Plus or iPad Pro 9.7″ model with no leftover files or settings. Simply scroll down and check the boxes for each device type before closing the window.

Note: If you need help narrowing your search even more, make sure to read our article about how to hide iOS apps using Securly delete VPNs. It may take some doing but if you are very careful, you should be able to clear most of the junk.

How to Remove Hardware With No Data Left Behind

Removing hardware can seem pretty drastic so let us give you some tips.

Open the Build Settings tab

The “Architecture” settings section contains an option to exclude certain architectures from being built. By selecting the checkbox next to each architecture, you will no longer see that architecture show up in your project or compilation process.

By doing this, you have effectively excluded those architectures from ever being included in your app! For example, if you only wanted to build for iOS devices with at least iPhone 5S screen size, then you would uncheck the iPad simulator and iPhone 4s device and all newer generation iPhones will now be able to be installed and run by users who meet that criteria.

You can also add new exclusions by clicking the plus button beside it, then searching for the individual components of the system you want to remove.

Look for the Excluded Architectures build setting

Another way to prevent your app from building with an unsupported CPU is to use the Excluded Architectures build setting. You can set this to exclude only certain architectures by using a list of possible values for that setting.

By doing this, you have more control over which CPUs are compatible with your apps. This is helpful if you need your app to run on older devices or ones that cannot handle the newer features of the processor architecture.

You can also add additional architectures here so that your app will still work on devices that do not support the excluded processors.

Edit the setting to include more or less architectures

The second way to add excluded architecture for an app is by editing your build settings. To do this, navigate to the Settings tab of the Editor section. Here you can choose how many architectures you want your app to have.

You can either increase the number of allowed archs which will allow your app to run faster as there are additional instructions that iOS needs to know how to process. Or you can reduce it so that it runs much slower because it does not need all those extra features.

Run the app on a simulator or physical device

In addition to choosing which architectures you want your binary to have, you can also choose not to include a specific architecture by using the “no-tool” option. This way, your app will still run but it will be missing some resources that are only available on that architechure.

This is very helpful in cases where there is no emulator or real device with the included features that your app requires. For example, if your app uses Google Maps then it cannot be installed on an iOS device that does not have GPS.

Test the app

It is important to test your apps before you add any excluded architectures so that you do not accidentally include an architecture it does not support. You can go through all of your binary files or use automatic tools that check for this.

There are several ways to test if your app supports an iOS platform version. The easiest way is to simply launch the Settings app, tap General -> Software Updates and make sure there is an update for iPhone OS installed.

If there is, then your app is working correctly! This seems very obvious, but many people forget about it.

Commit and push to the repository

The next step is to actually commit your changes and push them up to GitHub. Make sure you are logged into your account first, then choose “Create pull request” from the main menu at the top.

Choose the appropriate branch (usually master) as the destination and click continue. You will now need to select the source for the merge. Find the Settings section under Source Control and pick the Checkout option.

Select the Branch option and use the drop down to find the correct BitBucket or Github source.