Speeding up asset catalog compilation for developer builds

With the rising amount of assets in the iOS app, the time to compile them is also growing. Is it possible to speed up asset catalog compilation for development purposes only?

E.g. perhaps there are shortcuts or build settings to only copy the assets instead of compressing & optimizing them for debug / developer builds.
Answered by DTS Engineer in 667376022
The one small tip I can offer is to look at the Asset Catalog's default compression settings -- this is found in the File Inspector tab, under the heading Asset Catalog. Individual assets can override this setting if needed in the Attributes Inspector for the specific asset. You can experiment with the different values to see if they make a useful difference to your build times, but there isn't a way to change the value based on Debug or Release build configurations.
There isn't a way to do adjust those compiler settings, like there is for code optimizations. However, the Xcode team would love to hear about what you're encountering with long build times. If you could make a small sample app that uses your real asset catalog to demonstrate the long compile times, please do so, and use Feedback Assistant to let the team know. Post the FB number here so I can cross-reference it once you've done so.
Accepted Answer
The one small tip I can offer is to look at the Asset Catalog's default compression settings -- this is found in the File Inspector tab, under the heading Asset Catalog. Individual assets can override this setting if needed in the Attributes Inspector for the specific asset. You can experiment with the different values to see if they make a useful difference to your build times, but there isn't a way to change the value based on Debug or Release build configurations.
Thank you very much for the reply! You can find a summary of the request in FB9048011.

Hi, just curious if there was any development on this topic? We have several asset catalogs in multiple target frameworks which take 30+ seconds (some time ~50 secs) to compile. I don't even understand what exactly are these phases compiling? What does it mean by compiling the assets? Just optimizations? How can we reduce this time?

And lastly where can I see status of above request FB9048011?

And lastly where can I see status of above request FB9048011?

You can’t, at least not directly. My Bug Reporting: How and Why? post talks about this and offers up one (very limited) option.

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Speeding up asset catalog compilation for developer builds
 
 
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