Tip for finding documentation for Apple tools and APIs

When trying to find documentation or ‘official’ Apple guidance on things, you usually need to look in a few places. One trick that has helped me a number of times is to use Google to search Apple’s sites, excluding the forums.

<query> site:apple.com AND -site:developer.apple.com/forums AND -site:forums.developer.apple.com AND -site:discussions.apple.com

This technique surfaces mentions from the developer documentation pages, but also from WWDC pdfs and the extremely valuable Technical Notes.

For example when looking for info on altool, the query: xcrun altool site:apple.com AND -site:developer.apple.com/forums AND -site:forums.developer.apple.com AND -site:discussions.apple.com

Returned the following set of info:

Sidenote

If you are looking specifically for information on how to use altool , the command line help is extremely thorough. xcrun altool --help