@IBDesignable error: IB Designables: Failed to update auto layout status: Interface Builder Cocoa Touch Tool crashed

I have a very simple subclass of UITextView that adds the "Placeholder" functionality that you can find native to the Text Field object. Here is my code for the subclass:

import UIKit
import Foundation

@IBDesignable class PlaceholderTextView: UITextView, UITextViewDelegate
{
    @IBInspectable var placeholder: String = "" {
        didSet {
            setPlaceholderText()
        }
    }
    private let placeholderColor: UIColor = UIColor.lightGrayColor()        
    private var textColorCache: UIColor!
    
    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame: frame)
        self.delegate = self
    }
    
    required init(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        self.delegate = self
    }
    
    func textViewDidBeginEditing(textView: UITextView) {
        if textView.text == placeholder {
            textView.text = ""
            textView.textColor = textColorCache
        }
    }
    
    func textViewDidEndEditing(textView: UITextView) {
        if textView.text == "" && placeholder != "" {
            setPlaceholderText()
        }
    }
    
    func setPlaceholderText() {
        if placeholder != "" {
            if textColorCache == nil { textColorCache = self.textColor }
            self.textColor = placeholderColor
            self.text = placeholder
        }
    }
}

After changing the class for the UITextView object in the Identity Inspector to PlaceholderTextView, I can set the Placeholder property just fine in the Attribute Inspector. The code works great when running the app, but does not display the placeholder text in the interface builder. I also get the following non-blocking errors (I assume this is why it's not rendering at design time):

> error: IB Designables: Failed to update auto layout status: Interface Builder Cocoa Touch Tool crashed > > error: IB Designables: Failed to render instance of PlaceholderTextView: Rendering the view took longer than 200 ms. Your drawing code may suffer from slow performance.

I'm not able to figure out what is causing these errors. The second error doesn't make any sense, as I'm not even overriding drawRect(). Any ideas?

There are crash reports generated when Interface Builder Cocoa Touch Tool crashes. Theses are located in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports and named IBDesignablesAgentCocoaTouch_*.crash. In my case they contained a useful stack-trace that identified the issue in my code.

I have had the same issue a couple of times. Both times it started when I was loading an IBDesignable nib onto the storyboard when the nib was not able to fit on the view (ie I had a button off of the UIView but still in the nib). Once I fixed that Xcode still gave me errors so I restarted Xcode until it randomly stopped giving me the error.

I hope this helps.

UPDATE: I just killed all processes named "Interface Builder Cocoa Touch Tool", restarted Xcode and the error went away. Don't know if this will always work or not.

In my case, I was doing the next in the initWithFrame/initWithCoder methods to create the view:

className = NSStringFromClass([self class]);
self.view = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:className owner:self options:nil] firstObject];

It looks like I was Not supposed to use the Main Bundle, but instead the bundle of the class. So I replaced that code for the following and it worked:

bundle = [NSBundle bundleForClass:[self class]];
className = NSStringFromClass([self class]);
self.view = [[bundle loadNibNamed:className owner:self options:nil] firstObject];

I thought maybe this might help somebody.

You could select your custom view in Interface Builder and then use Editor, Debug Selected Views. It will launch so-called IBDesignableAgentCocoaTouch debug session when all breakpoints (including exception breakpoints) work and you could exactly identify the place your view crashes.

For Xcode 8 - Swift

Adding optional value as default value on @IBInspectable causing issue for me.

This won't work:

@IBInspectable var repeatImage: UIImage = UIImage(named:"myImage")!{
      didSet {
       // configureView
      }
}

This should work:

@IBInspectable var repeatImage: UIImage = RepeatImageView.getDefaultImage() {
    didSet {
        // configureView()
    }
}

class func getDefaultImage() -> UIImage {
    if let defaultImage = UIImage(named: "myImage") {
        return defaultImage
    } else {
        return UIImage()
    }
}

I was experiencing the similar Interface Builder issues rendering designables.

Using the technique suggested in this answer I was able to track down the issue to the use of image literals.

Rendering crash

self.backgroundImage.image =  #imageLiteral(resourceName: "rectangleCenter")

No rendering crash

self.backgroundImage.image =  UIImage(named: "rectangleCenter")

Actually if you have some old user defined attributes (which is not valid for current view) at any view in your storyboard, that may cause your agent to crash.

Besides, sometimes it happens just because of a nasty bug of Xcode. To check it out, when you're at storyboard uncheck Editor > Automatically Refresh Views, then move to another file, clean and restart your project. After you entered storyboard again, you can click Editor > Refresh Views and check automatic one again. That one also solved my problem once.

If both didn't work, then probably you have done something wrong about your IBDesignable view, so choose your crashed views in storyboard and debug by clicking Editor > Debug Views

I had the same issue and I solved it by adding the 'use_frameworks!' to my project's Podfile.

Hope it helps you.

This is not the case for this question, but maybe I will help someone else.

I had a similar problem when in my @IBDesignable class I did not implemented both:

required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
    super.init(coder: aDecoder)
    
    // custom setup
}

override init(frame: CGRect) {
    super.init(frame: frame)

    // custom setup
}

In my case, it was a problem with OneSignal. Apparently, they have a bug within the version 2.2.0 and above. Switched to 2.1.6 and everything's great again!

Check out this.

In my case it was somehow related to a carthage framework that I was using. I had to add $(PROJECT_DIR)/Carthage/Build/iOS to the Runpath Search Paths build setting

When i debugged this i found out there are some classes which are modifying UI. Typically marquelabel which is a subclass of UILabel or any other class subclassing UIView and drawing ui at run time and colliding with Autolayout engine. Try giving fixed width or height for these custom views. If it doesn't solve your problem try Following solutions:-

Solution 1:- Uncomment #use_frameworks inside your pod file.

Solution 2:- Try deleting derived data. 1. Close Editor window of your Xcode and quit simulator -> 2. Go to Xcode Preferences -> Locations -> 3. Click small grey arrow showing derived data path -> 4. Select your project -> 5. Delete all the folders inside -> 6. Quit Xcode and reopen

Add it to the bottom of your Podfile and run pod install

# Workaround for Cocoapods issue #7606

    post_install do |installer|
        installer.pods_project.build_configurations.each do |config|
            config.build_settings.delete('CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED')
            config.build_settings.delete('CODE_SIGNING_REQUIRED')
        end
    end

Add this script at the end of my Podfile and performed pod install again.

post_install do |installer|
    installer.pods_project.build_configurations.each do |config|
        config.build_settings.delete('CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED')
        config.build_settings.delete('CODE_SIGNING_REQUIRED')
    end
end

A major issue is when you are creating @IBDesignable make sure the cocoapod file isn't included in the UITests or else it will cause this crash.

I find the reason is your xib is not the same size as the design in storyboard. Make sure the xib has the same height and width.

I was just missing this line of code platform :ios, '7.0' and problem was solved. Just this line in your pod file and update your pod issue will be resolved.

For me it was a missing signing certificate, because I never ran the app, so Xcode did not yet create a certificate. Once I ran the app, the IBDesignable rendering worked fine.

It's like if you got Code from other Developer and you get this error. Just run

pod install

This worked for me. Hope It helps.

Make sure that you are not directly initialising UIImage or UIFont using assets or fonts added in your project.

I always create a private func setUp() in my @IBDesignable custom UI classes. which is called from init(frame: CGRect), init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder). So I finally updated the setup() as the following.

private func setUp() {

     //... Doing initial configurations

     // iconImageView.image = UIImage(named: "IconImageName")! // Causing the Crash, use if let OR guard let instead
     if let icon = UIImage(named: "IconImageName") {
          iconImageView.image = icon
          iconImageView.frame.size = icon.size
     }

     // nameLabel.font =  UIFont(name: "Calibri-Light", size: 15.0) // Causing the Crash, use if let OR guard let instead
     if let font = UIFont(name: "Calibri-Light", size: size) {
	      nameLabel.font =  font
     } else {
          nameLabel.font = UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: size) 
     }

     // Doing other stuffs
}

I did everything and it did not work till I restarted MAC. Try restarting MAC. Worked for me.

Just let it to build and run on simulator if you have error in somewhere else in project just comment it out and run designable first to update designable and uncomment the other codes. It works for me.