XCode 5: Documentation Viewer only shows "What's New in Xcode"

Question

When I select 'Help->Documentation and API Reference' in XCode 5, the only content that shows up in the doc viewer window is the "What's new in Xcode" notes. I can't see any way to browse or load any actual API documentation content.

I checked the ~/Library/Developer/Shared/Documentation/DocSets folder and verified that the docs sets are there for iOS5 - iOS7. After re-installing XCode 4.6.3 I also verified the documentation content can be seen in the old Organizer Help.

I'd rather not keep XCode 4 around just to read docs offline; how can I force XCode 5 to load the local documentation sets?

Answer 1

Short answer:

Seems like searching for documentation is the only option. The right sidebar is an index only applicable to the current document (in this case "What's new in Xcode"). The documentation is there and visible to Xcode 5, but it doesn't appear to have exposed a way to browse them directly.

Long answer:

It appears to me that you have to search for the documentation rather than being able to browse it. For instance, with the default search settings (the magnifying glass on "Automatic"), searching for "Mountain Lion" (without highlighting an autocomplete entry) will bring up a search page, and under SDK Guides will be the entry "OS X Mountain Lion v10.8". The right sidebar will turn into a browser for the "What's New in OS X" category. This appears to be the only way to "browse" the documentation. Even using View->Show Tab Bar and opening a new tab only opens a blank page.

The Apple Developer page "New Features in Xcode 5" has information on the new Documentation viewer. The description sounds similar to how the online library works, where if the current document has multiple sections, it will show you the table of contents for the document currently open. For instance, the page I linked is part of a document "What's new in Xcode". There is no indication, both from the linked page and from looking at the application, that there is a way to browse categories like in Xcode 4.

The Xcode 5 release notes do say that you can store documentation in the DocSets folder, just as before.

The online Developer Libraries still have a minimal amount of navigation. In terms of offline docs, Apple's provided .docset files have the same interface stored inside at Show Package Contents -> Contents/Resources/Documentation/navigation/index.html. If you use the "Share" button on the Xcode Documentation window to open the page in a web browser (I had much better luck with Safari than Chrome 31), you can click on the Mac/iOS Developer Library link in the top left corner of the webpage. In Safari, this opens a Finder window located in one of the DocSets in the DocSet folder. You can then go to the navigation folder and open index.html (Safari loaded this, while Chrome sat and spun) to get the same interface as the online libraries.

Hopefully the old category browsing gets reimplemented (or someone rediscovers how to view it). In the meantime it may help to start making and using bookmarks, which are the grey flags next to article titles/sections, and browse them using the left sidebar of the Documentation window. The main project window's right sidebar also has a Quick Help (the box with wavy lines) which may be of some use, with the Features in Xcode 5 saying that it can display Doxygen or HeaderDoc style documentation comments from your code.