Summary: The Xcode Find in Project command offers several options: Textual, Regular Expression, Definition, and Symbol. If you search by Symbol, then the results include files from outside the project, contrary to my settings in Options. Steps to Reproduce: 1) Launch Terminal.app 2) Change directory to the root folder of an Xcode project 3) Create a new dummy source file in the directory: $ cat > dummy.h #import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h> @class MyDummyClass; 4) Open the project in Xcode 5) command-shift-f to Find in Project 6) Select "In Project" from the first popup 7) Select "Symbol" from the second popup 8) Select "Contains" from the third popup 9) Enter the search term "MyDummyClass" and press the Find button Expected Results: No search results. Actual Results: The search results include the symbol MyDummyClass in the file "dummy.h" Regression: No regression testing done. Notes: Textual search works as expected, returning no search results. The reason I was using Symbol search is that it finds results in .nib files, unlike textual search. This bug is defeating my entire purpose in using Symbol search. I was attempting to discover whether it was safe to delete a symbol from the project. I had to make sure that the symbol wasn't used in any nibs. The problem was that the project's folder contains a number of old, currently unused files. These files are no longer part of the xcodeproj. However, the files still exist on disk. Unfortunately, Xcode is searching these files that are no longer part of the project. Thus, it was returning symbols that are no longer used in the app.