Set Up an iOS Simulator on a Mac
by c.bavota | Posted in Tutorials | 10 comments
Lately, I’ve been developing a lot of responsive designs specifically for the iPad and iPhone. Since I do all my developing on a Mac, I thought there’d be some type of iOS simulator hidden away on my machine to make it easier on me. Sadly, there wasn’t. But getting one set up was easy enough.
First thing you need to do is download xCode from the App Store. Type “xCode” into the search box to track it down then click install. It’ll take a little while so feel free to take a breather.
Once xCode has been downloaded and installed on your machine, open up your Applications folder and scroll down to it. Right click and select “Show Package Contents”. Next, follow the folder path below to get to the simulator:
Content => Developer => Platforms => iPhoneSimulator.platform => Developer => Applications => iOS Simulator
Drag the iOS Simulator icon onto your dashboard so you’ll have easy access to it. It’ll allow you to test your work on the iPhone 4 and 5, as well as a regular or retina display iPad.
For more information check out the using iOS Simulator help page.
Thanks for this. I’ve been searching for a tutorial to set up a iOS Simulator.
Thanks for sharing. Been looking for how to set that up.
Thanks for posting. Exactly what I’ve been looking for!
Thanks for the post, just what I’ve been looking for for the last couple of hours!
Brilliant resource clearly explained. Thank you.
Love It – Subscribed!
Create an alias to iOS Simulator by doing the following
From the Finder, press Command+Shift+G and paste in the following:
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/Applications/
Select “iOS Simulator.app” and either drag it into the Dock, Launchpad, or hit Command+L to create an alias
You can also install older versions of the IOS Simulator by launching Xcode, then go to Preferences, Downloads tab, and install the desired IOS Simulator version (e.g., 6.0, 5.1, 5.0.).
Is there a way I can run Apps from the App Store in the simulator?
Hmm. Not too sure about that. You should be able to test out Apps you are developing but I don’t think you can run regular Apps.
This is very useful and only took 30mins to setup!