What is "Processing Symbol Files" message in Xcode?

Processing symbol files is a message displayed on xcode when we create a project’s build. When this message appears, in background Xcode downloads files and symbol files for specific device and a specific processor on which build shall be installed.

The symbol files contains debug symbols which are used to debug on specific processor and iOS version and when some crash or error occurs, those symbols are used to create crash reports. Once processing symbols is done a new folder with device symbols is created in the library, usually under “~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS DeviceSupport/ “.

Sometimes our system might get stuck on this step for a longer time, which is either caused by a bad USB connection or too many crash logs. To speed up this process you can either remove and change the USB cable, or delete the logs once you are done with debugging certain point.