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How to re-enable keyboard shortcuts in Xcode 27's Device Hub

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How to re-enable keyboard shortcuts in Xcode 27's Device Hub
K
Kris Slazinski

👨🏻‍💻 UX Designer, self-employed at NEXT PLANET - small design studio. 👨🏻‍💻 Indie iOS developer 📱 Creator of: Moons, Numi, Skoro, Wins and Emo. 🎸Guitarist at ZERO and Quadroom 🎨 MA in art 🌱 Vegan

iOSdev / Xcode 27

For some odd reason, Apple decided to disable keyboard shortcuts in Device Hub, their replacement for Xcode Simulator. Well, most shortcuts. I've been using many of Xcode Simulator's shortcuts very often while building and testing my apps - things like Toggle Appearance (to turn Dark Mode on/off), Zoom to Fit, Physical Size, and, most importantly, Screenshot and Record Screen (see image below).

Surprisingly, all the keyboard shortcuts work in the Expanded Mode of Device Hub!

I'm not sure what Apple officially calls this mode, but when you hover over the button for switching modes, it says either "Expand to view all controls" or "Switch to compact window", so I'll call them Compact Mode and Expanded Mode here.

It seems a bit buggy, though. Sometimes shortcuts are not enabled even when I switch to Expanded Mode. Switching back to Compact Mode and then to Expanded Mode again solves this.

Thankfully, there is a better fix - I found a way to enable keyboard shortcuts in both modes! The solution is in the Xcode 27 Release Notes:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode-release-notes/xcode-27-release-notes

This part specifically:

Fixed: Added a preference to control whether key combos are sent to Device Hub or to the remote device.

defaults -container com.apple.dt.Devices write com.apple.dt.Devices hostKeybindingPolicy -int

Use these values to define a specific behavior:
0 - Device Hub uses rich key combo shortcuts.
1 - Minimized when interacting with device.
2 - Device Hub uses minimal key combo shortcuts. (178920247)

I don't find this note very obvious, but basically it means that we can use this command in Terminal with three different values (0, 1, or 2):

defaults -container com.apple.dt.Devices write com.apple.dt.Devices hostKeybindingPolicy -int 0

All keyboard shortcuts work in both Compact Mode and Expanded Mode.

defaults -container com.apple.dt.Devices write com.apple.dt.Devices hostKeybindingPolicy -int 1

All keyboard shortcuts work only in Expanded Mode.

defaults -container com.apple.dt.Devices write com.apple.dt.Devices hostKeybindingPolicy -int 2

Most keyboard shortcuts are disabled in both Compact Mode and Expanded Mode.

We can also run this command to check the current setting:

defaults -container com.apple.dt.Devices read com.apple.dt.Devices hostKeybindingPolicy

I set this new option to 0 and done! I can use keyboard shortcuts again in every mode in Device Hub.

Now I just hope Apple will add proper settings in Device Hub 27.1 where we can change these options in the UI, instead of making it a hidden, magical Terminal spell just to do something as basic as taking screenshots. 🫠

Thank you for reading!

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#iosdev#xcode#macos#apple#appdevelopment

Comments (3)

Join the discussion
J
Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia16h ago

You can also modify this setting directly in Device Hub's Settings which was added in Xcode 27.2 Beta 1.

K
Kris Slazinski7h ago

Thanks for letting me know. It's great that Apple finally added a proper UI for these settings.

D
Duko tools18d ago

Buried in a release note as "added a preference" when it's actually "fixed a regression nobody asked to have shipped", classic. Bookmarking the defaults command, thanks for digging through the notes so the rest of us don't have to.

K
Kris Slazinski18d ago

You’re welcome ☺️

B
Ben Thomas18d ago

Got this:

Command line interface to a user's defaults.
Syntax:

'defaults' [-currentHost | -host <hostname>] followed by one of the following:
K
Kris Slazinski18d ago

Do you have macOS 27 and Xcode 27 installed? Was this the whole output from Terminal? Which command did you run in Terminal?

B
Ben Thomas18d ago

Hi Kris, I'm still on macOS 26 on this work laptop because we need to keep submitting with Xcode 26 for the time being.

I do have Xcode 27 installed.

The command I ran in terminal was: defaults -container com.apple.dt.Devices write com.apple.dt.Devices hostKeybindingPolicy -int 1

I tried running defaults write com.apple.dt.Devices hostKeybindingPolicy -int 1 but still the screenshot shortcut doesn't appear in the Controls menu of DeviceHub.

Regards Ben

K
Kris Slazinski18d ago

Ben, you should use 0 not 1 to have shortcuts enabled in both modes.

I don’t know why did you see this message you posted earlier. Maybe because of macOS 26? Also, this command for changing settings should be posted as one thing. Formatted on blog it looks like separate lines of commands.

Also I heard from one person that they needed to grant full disk access to Terminal to make this work - but again the message you posted didn’t look like that’s the case.

G
Giano4d ago

This worked for me on macOS 26:

defaults write com.apple.dt.Devices hostKeybindingPolicy -int 0

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NEXT PLANET - UX and iOS dev

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My name's Kris. I am a UX Designer and iOS Developer. I design and make apps under the brand NEXT PLANET.