To put the solution here for the future: this is intended behavior and caused by the systems Preferred Languages list. In my case, I had Thai in there (for testing). Apparently the system increases line height to avoid line jumping when mixing scripts. Thanks to Jiang Jiang for helping me out: https://mastodon.social/@jjgod/113571613240597707. I also learned this affects all system fonts when querying them through .preferredFontDescriptor(forTextStyle:). However it does not affect .systemFont(ofSize:) and friends. Which is what led me into thinking it was just New York – but it’s every font.

One year in, a major Xcode version later and the XCStrings editor is still a joke. Multi-select, cut, copy, paste should be trivial to add. Not sure if anybody at Apple is actually using this themselves. And even beyond the UI, the extraction is riddled with bugs (FB13206437, FB13190441). That said, the easiest way I've found is to edit the file's XML. In Xcode, right click on the xcstrings files and select Open As › Source Code. It's tedious, because it's really verbose, but it works well enough for bulk changes. I just wish Apple wouldn't waste all resources on AI, to make at least some room for fixes like this… PS: To put my radar where my mouth is, I've filed FB15984899 for this interface and usability issue.

I've been able to confirm this is not linked to my user account, as new users show the same behavior. I've reported this as FB15887762. Should somebody be reading this: thanks!

Have you found anything that causes these kinds of crashes and how to maybe circumvent them? Seeing this quite heavily again in Xcode 16 beta (so far 1...4)

Just stumbled across this as well. Still does not seem to have changed by macOS 14…

5 days later and we keep getting a similar error trying to upload a macOS TestFlight build: This bundle is invalid. Apple is not currently accepting applications built with this version of the OS. This used to be an issue only traditionally, when TestFlight was not yet available for macOS. But both Xcode 15 b7 and macOS 14 beta 6 are a week old now, so this should just work. Very annoying