Whenever Qt Creator displays a pointer (and possibly a reference) in the Locals and Expressions, it displays only the pointer's value. For example, right now I am seeing:

 * this    @0x7fffffffca90
  * d      @0x7ffff796c220

But if you ask the debugger (gdb at least), it can provide a more meaningful name:

(gdb) p/a this
$1 = 0x7fffffffca90
(gdb) p/a d
$2 = 0x7ffff796c220 <_ZL18emptyNotNullShared>

That extra name can be extremely useful in debugging.

This feature could be left disabled by default if the cost is high of obtaining such information for all pointers and references. It should be on by default for all function pointers, though (member and non-member ones).

Another trick is for Creator to know which pointers are pointing to memory regions of loaded libraries (see gdb command info shared) and enable symbolic names only for those.