Xcode storyboard: Why does the iPad storyboard show iPhone sized views?

After some digging through the storyboard source code, it turns out that the iPad storyboard was copied from the iPhone storyboard. So, the question really became how do I convert an iPhone storyboard into an iPad storyboard?

The answer is surprisingly simple. I ran across this SO answer -- to convert an iPhone storyboard to an iPad storyboard, do the following:

1. From Xcode, right-click on the storyboard and choose Open As -> Source code

2. Search for targetRuntime="iOS.CocoaTouch"and change it to targetRuntime="iOS.CocoaTouch.iPad"

3. Right-click on the storyboard again and choose Open As -> iOS Storyboard

The storyboard will now show all views in the correct size.

This answer is not a solution, but will help to get one of the reasons why such things happen.

The issue occurs when you try to disable:

"Use Auto Layout"

When you uncheck it, the popup window appears. There is select:

"Keep size class data for: iPhone", by default is selected iPhone (no matter which iPad or iPhone project you created).

If you will not mention on it, your storyboard will be auto converted to iPhone sizes.

Do not forget to choose right device.

When you first create a storyboard you select a Device Family (iPhone or iPad) that the storyboard is targeted for. I don't know of a way to change the device family once the storyboard has already been created.

However, to solve your problem I recommend the following:

Create a new storyboard by going to: New -> File -> User Interface -> Storyboard (Be sure to select Device Family = iPad when choosing the options.)

Go to your old storyboard, select and copy everything by pressing Command-A, Command-C. Then go to your and paste everything by pressing Command-V. Your view controllers will now be iPad-sized.

You can then delete the old storyboard and rename your new storyboard to whatever the old name was.