... rather than a gui for build phases, targets, etc? I usually see the gui.

Sometimes this happens because you are in version-control view. There are three buttons: normal view, assistant view, and version-control view. Make sure you're in one of the first two. <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/2m17W.png" alt="enter image description here"> EDIT: Also, I had another thought. "pbxproj"??? The current suffix is "xcodeproj", and has been for a really long time. You might be just trying to open a file that's too old for your version of Xcode.

Why does clicking on a project in the Xcode navigator show a raw pbxproj file

... rather than a gui for build phases, targets, etc?

I usually see the gui.

Sometimes this happens because you are in version-control view. There are three buttons: normal view, assistant view, and version-control view. Make sure you're in one of the first two.

enter image description here

EDIT: Also, I had another thought. "pbxproj"??? The current suffix is "xcodeproj", and has been for a really long time. You might be just trying to open a file that's too old for your version of Xcode.