17-09-2021

The iPhone Simulator is easy to use, and happens to be very convenient for both advanced, and intermediate users. Xamarin TestFlight. The next iOS emulator to run iPhone apps on PC comes in the form of Xamarin TestFlight, the first official Apple emulator that is made for testing the apps developed for iOS. It enables the development of applications for all Apple operating systems including iOS, MacOS, tvOS, and WatchOS. Xcode has been developed by Apple. Technically, you have downloaded the simulator, but, there are still a couple of steps. Aug 19, 2021 IOS Simulator is a part of the Xcode development tools, and can be downloaded for free to run on any macOS system. The iOS Simulator is also not an emulator. It is an application which runs on macOS and runs iOS. Appypie is actually an ios app creating software that comes with an ios emulator to run ios apps on Macintosh devices.

  • Get the Flutter SDK
  • iOS setup
  • Android setup
  • How to Get iOS Simulator on Mac 2021This simple video shows how to get ios simulator on Mac. We have two options to launch iPhone simulator in Mac.Option 1.
  • You may connect a real device to your Mac using a cable, or for iOS or tvOS apps, connect it over WiFi after you pair it with Xcode. For macOS apps, choose a scheme, then click the Run button in the toolbar. You can also run SwiftUI apps in the simulator or on a device using the controls in the preview.

System requirements

Appetize.io is not an emulator. It is a service which provides an interactive video stream of iOS Simulator running on a macOS system. IOS Simulator is a part of the Xcode development tools, and can be downloaded for free to run on any macOS system. The iOS Simulator is also not an emulator. It is an application which runs on macOS and runs iOS. Appypie is actually an ios app creating software that comes with an ios emulator to run ios apps on Macintosh devices. To run ios apps on Mac you can easily use this app builder and take advantage of the ios emulator that it comes with. You can find free and paid plans on Appypie making it easy for developers to use ios apps on their Mac devices.

To install and run Flutter,your development environment must meet these minimum requirements:

  • Operating Systems: macOS (64-bit)
  • Disk Space: 2.8 GB (does not include disk space for IDE/tools).
  • Tools: Flutter uses git for installation and upgrade. We recommendinstalling Xcode, which includes git, but you can also install git separately.

Important: If you’re installing on a Mac with the latest Apple M1 processor, you may find these supplementary notes useful reading as we complete support for the new Apple Silicon architecture.

Get the Flutter SDK

  1. Download the following installation bundle to get the lateststable release of the Flutter SDK:

    For other release channels, and older builds,see the SDK releases page.

  2. Extract the file in the desired location, for example:

  3. Add the flutter tool to your path:

    This command sets your PATH variable for thecurrent terminal window only.To permanently add Flutter to your path, seeUpdate your path.

You are now ready to run Flutter commands!

Note: To update an existing version of Flutter, see Upgrading Flutter.

Run flutter doctor

Run the following command to see if there are any dependencies you need toinstall to complete the setup (for verbose output, add the -v flag):

This command checks your environment and displays a report to the terminalwindow. The Dart SDK is bundled with Flutter; it is not necessary to installDart separately. Check the output carefully for other software you mightneed to install or further tasks to perform (shown in bold text).

For example:

The following sections describe how to perform these tasks and finish the setupprocess.

Once you have installed any missing dependencies, run the flutter doctorcommand again to verify that you’ve set everything up correctly.

Downloading straight from GitHub instead of using an archive

This is only suggested for advanced use cases.

You can also use git directly instead of downloading the prepared archive. For example,to download the stable branch:

Update your path, and run flutter doctor. That will let you know if there areother dependencies you need to install to use Flutter (e.g. the Android SDK).

If you did not use the archive, Flutter will download necessary development binaries as theyare needed (if you used the archive, they are included in the download). You may wish topre-download these development binaries (for example, you may wish to do this when settingup hermetic build environments, or if you only have intermittent network availability). Todo so, run the following command:

For additional download options, see flutter help precache.

Warning: The flutter tool uses Google Analytics to anonymously report feature usage statistics and basic crash reports. This data is used to help improve Flutter tools over time.

Flutter tool analytics are not sent on the very first run. To disable reporting, type flutter config --no-analytics. To display the current setting, type flutter config. If you opt out of analytics, an opt-out event is sent, and then no further information is sent by the Flutter tool.

By downloading the Flutter SDK, you agree to the Google Terms of Service. Note: The Google Privacy Policy describes how data is handled in this service.

Moreover, Flutter includes the Dart SDK, which may send usage metrics and crash reports to Google.

Update your path

You can update your PATH variable for the current session atthe command line, as shown in Get the Flutter SDK.You’ll probably want to update this variable permanently,so you can run flutter commands in any terminal session.

The steps for modifying this variable permanently forall terminal sessions are machine-specific.Typically you add a line to a file that is executedwhenever you open a new window. For example:

  1. Determine the directory where you placed the Flutter SDK.You need this in Step 3.
  2. Open (or create) the rc file for your shell.Typing echo $SHELL in your Terminal tells youwhich shell you’re using.If you’re using Bash,edit $HOME/.bash_profile or $HOME/.bashrc.If you’re using Z shell, edit $HOME/.zshrc.If you’re using a different shell, the file pathand filename will be different on your machine.
  3. Add the following line and change[PATH_TO_FLUTTER_GIT_DIRECTORY] to bethe path where you cloned Flutter’s git repo:

  4. Run source $HOME/.<rc file>to refresh the current window,or open a new terminal window toautomatically source the file.
  5. Verify that the flutter/bin directoryis now in your PATH by running:

    Verify that the flutter command is available by running:

Note: As of Flutter’s 1.19.0 dev release, the Flutter SDK contains the dart command alongside the flutter command so that you can more easily run Dart command-line programs. Downloading the Flutter SDK also downloads the compatible version of Dart, but if you’ve downloaded the Dart SDK separately, make sure that the Flutter version of dart is first in your path, as the two versions might not be compatible. The following command (on macOS, linux, and chrome OS), tells you whether the flutter and dart commands originate from the same bin directory and are therefore compatible. (Some versions of Windows support a similar where command.)

As shown above, the two commands don’t come from the same bin directory. Update your path to use commands from /path-to-flutter-sdk/bin before commands from /usr/local/bin (in this case). After updating your shell for the change to take effect, running the which or where command again should show that the flutter and dart commands now come from the same directory.

To learn more about the dart command, run dart -h from the command line, or see the dart tool page.

Platform setup

macOS supports developing Flutter apps in iOS, Android,and the web (technical preview release).Complete at least one of the platform setup steps now,to be able to build and run your first Flutter app.

iOS setup

Install Xcode

To develop Flutter apps for iOS, you need a Mac with Xcode installed.

  1. Install the latest stable version of Xcode(using web download or the Mac App Store).
  2. Configure the Xcode command-line tools to use thenewly-installed version of Xcode byrunning the following from the command line:

    This is the correct path for most cases,when you want to use the latest version of Xcode.If you need to use a different version,specify that path instead.

  3. Make sure the Xcode license agreement is signed byeither opening Xcode once and confirming or runningsudo xcodebuild -license from the command line.

Versions older than the latest stable version may still work,but are not recommended for Flutter development.Using old versions of Xcode to target bitcode is notsupported, and is likely not to work.

With Xcode, you’ll be able to run Flutter apps onan iOS device or on the simulator.

Set up the iOS simulator

To prepare to run and test your Flutter app on the iOS simulator,follow these steps:

  1. On your Mac, find the Simulator via Spotlight orby using the following command:

  2. Make sure your simulator is using a 64-bit device(iPhone 5s or later) by checking the settings inthe simulator’s Hardware > Device menu.
  3. Depending on your development machine’s screen size,simulated high-screen-density iOS devicesmight overflow your screen. Grab the corner of thesimulator and drag it to change the scale. You can alsouse the Window > Physical Size or Window > Pixel Accurateoptions if your computer’s resolution is high enough.
    • If you are using a version of Xcode olderthan 9.1, you should instead set the device scalein the Window > Scale menu.

Create and run a simple Flutter app

Macos ios simulator game

To create your first Flutter app and test your setup,follow these steps:

Ios simulator for pc
  1. Create a new Flutter app by running the following from thecommand line:

  2. A my_app directory is created, containing Flutter’s starter app.Enter this directory:

  3. To launch the app in the Simulator,ensure that the Simulator is running and enter:

Deploy to iOS devices

To deploy your Flutter app to a physical iOS deviceyou’ll need to set up physical device deployment in Xcodeand an Apple Developer account. If your app is using Flutter plugins,you will also need the third-party CocoaPods dependency manager.

  1. You can skip this step if your apps do not depend onFlutter plugins with native iOS code.Install and set up CocoaPods by running the following commands:

    Note: The default version of Ruby requires sudo to install the CocoaPods gem. If you are using a Ruby Version manager, you may need to run without sudo.

  2. Follow the Xcode signing flow to provision your project:

    1. Open the default Xcode workspace in your project byrunning open ios/Runner.xcworkspace in a terminalwindow from your Flutter project directory.
    2. Select the device you intend to deploy to in the devicedrop-down menu next to the run button.
    3. Select the Runner project in the left navigation panel.
    4. In the Runner target settings page,make sure your Development Team is selected.The UI varies depending on your version of Xcode.
      • For Xcode 10, look under General > Signing > Team.
      • For Xcode 11 and newer, look underSigning & Capabilities > Team.

      When you select a team,Xcode creates and downloads a Development Certificate,registers your device with your account,and creates and downloads a provisioning profile (if needed).

      • To start your first iOS development project,you might need to sign intoXcode with your Apple ID. Development and testing is supported for any Apple ID.Enrolling in the Apple Developer Program is required todistribute your app to the App Store.For details about membership types,see Choosing a Membership.
      • The first time you use an attached physical device for iOSdevelopment, you need to trust both your Mac and theDevelopment Certificate on that device.Select Trust in the dialog prompt whenfirst connecting the iOS device to your Mac.

        Then, go to the Settings app on the iOS device,select General > Device Managementand trust your Certificate.For first time users, you may need to selectGeneral > Profiles > Device Management instead.

      • If automatic signing fails in Xcode, verify that the project’sGeneral > Identity > Bundle Identifier value is unique.

  3. Start your app by running flutter runor clicking the Run button in Xcode.

Android setup

Note: Flutter relies on a full installation of Android Studio to supply its Android platform dependencies. However, you can write your Flutter apps in a number of editors; a later step discusses that.

Install Android Studio

  1. Download and install Android Studio.
  2. Start Android Studio, and go through the ‘Android Studio Setup Wizard’.This installs the latest Android SDK, Android SDK Command-line Tools,and Android SDK Build-Tools, which are required by Flutterwhen developing for Android.

Set up your Android device

To prepare to run and test your Flutter app on an Android device,you need an Android device running Android 4.1 (API level 16) or higher.

  1. Enable Developer options and USB debugging on your device.Detailed instructions are available in theAndroid documentation.
  2. Windows-only: Install the Google USBDriver.
  3. Using a USB cable, plug your phone into your computer. If prompted on yourdevice, authorize your computer to access your device.
  4. In the terminal, run the flutter devices command to verify thatFlutter recognizes your connected Android device. By default,Flutter uses the version of the Android SDK where your adbtool is based. If you want Flutter to use a different installationof the Android SDK, you must set the ANDROID_SDK_ROOT environmentvariable to that installation directory.

Set up the Android emulator

To prepare to run and test your Flutter app on the Android emulator,follow these steps:

  1. EnableVM accelerationon your machine.
  2. Launch Android Studio, click the AVD Managericon, and select Create Virtual Device…
    • In older versions of Android Studio, you should insteadlaunch Android Studio > Tools > Android > AVD Manager and selectCreate Virtual Device…. (The Android submenu is only presentwhen inside an Android project.)
    • If you do not have a project open, you can choose Configure > AVD Manager and select Create Virtual Device…
  3. Choose a device definition and select Next.
  4. Select one or more system images for the Android versions you wantto emulate, and select Next.An x86 or x86_64 image is recommended.
  5. Under Emulated Performance, select Hardware - GLES 2.0 to enablehardwareacceleration.
  6. Verify the AVD configuration is correct, and select Finish.

    For details on the above steps, see ManagingAVDs.

  7. In Android Virtual Device Manager, click Run in the toolbar.The emulator starts up and displays the default canvas for yourselected OS version and device.

Web setup

Run Ios Emulator On Mac From Terminal Mac

Iphone Emulator For Mac

Flutter has early support for building web applications using thebeta channel of Flutter. To add support for web development, followthese instructions when you’ve completed the setup above.

Ios App Emulator For Pc

Next step

Run Ios Emulator On Mac From Terminal Download

Set up your preferred editor.

Bringing iOS Apps to macOS Using Marzipanify

March 01 2019

At WWDC 2018 Apple gave us a ‘sneak peek’ at perhaps one of the most impactful developments on macOS since the transition to Mac OS X: UIKit apps running on the desktop. Today, I'm going to detail a special tool I built, called marzipanify, to get started with UIKit on the Mac early, and start the initial bringup of your iOS app on macOS.

💡 Don't miss the other posts in this series

Macos Ios Simulator
  • Part one: Bringing iOS Apps to macOS Using Marzipanify

  • Part two: Making Marzipan Apps Sing

  • Part three: Deeper Integration with Marzipan

Overview

UIKit on the desktop is not like traditional macOS frameworks; it has its own /System/iOSSupport directory that houses a web of dependencies taken from the iOS Simulator — iOS variants of WebKit, MapKit, and more — and is compiled as if it were a whole other platform to macOS, called 'iOSMac'. We know iOSMac by another name, rumored since December of 2017: Marzipan.

How it works

There's another reason for the iosmac distinction: many of the frameworks underneath, née iOS Simulator, clash horrendously with the built-in macOS frameworks, thanks to a decade of divergence from OS X. Both iOS and macOS today share a UIFoundation framework to help support UIKit and AppKit and provide common code, but UIFoundation makes decisions at runtime based on which platform it's running on that affect everything from Interface Builder to text rendering. At its simplest level, this means that if you link AppKit into your iOSMac app, all manner of things will explode in your app. The iosmac linker variant for iOSMac binaries explicitly prevents loading non-iosmac binaries and libraries into your code (unless they're whitelisted).

macOS has several new components to support UIKit apps. At the top level is your UIKit app, except it doesn't run directly. Its layers are hosted in another process, UIKitHostApp.xpc, which provides the AppKit-based window chrome and bridge to Mac features like the menu bar and toolbar. Each UIKitHostApp is managed by a singular UIKitSystem app, which acts as the window/process/event manager. UIKitSystem takes the place in which SpringBoard traditionally sits on iOS, acting as the shell UI for all iOSMac apps, but bridging management to macOS' own WindowServer instead of providing a homescreen of its own.

Altogether, it appears running modern UIKit on macOS is so much more complex than the more-obvious tack Chameleon took when it rewrote UIKit for the Mac all those years ago. It's not a virtual machine by any stretch, despite evolving from the iOS Simulator, but it certainly goes to great lengths to distance itself from how Mac apps traditionally work. Perhaps that is a function of its incomplete state, or perhaps it hints at a vision for a new baseline for all Mac apps.

So. Enough preamble. How do I build my own UIKit apps on macOS?

Security & Preparation

iOSMac apps follow the modern pattern with Apple technologies in that they are 'entitlement-gated'. This means that unless your app is signed with private entitlements from Apple, the system will refuse to launch it. Because of this, even developers hoping to experiment with building iOSMac apps early, to get a head-start on macOS 10.15's public API, are unable to build and run their code by default on macOS.

Fortunately, macOS, unlike iOS, has a system which allows you to completely disable security and bypass everything. While that sounds terrifying, don't forget that that's just how macOS worked by default a few OS releases ago. It's only in recent years that everything has been locked down tightly.

To disable security, you first need to disable System Integrity Protection from Recovery Mode, and then you add a boot argument to bypass Apple Mobile File Integrity. Once disabled, this is how your Mac will run by default. If you wish to re-enable it, you can do so in the same way.

In Recovery Mode, use Terminal:

Now you can reboot into macOS proper.

Getting up and running

At this point, you could absolutely set up a build environment for iOSMac apps, but it's an arduous and complex process.

In some form or other, you need to:

  • Copy all the UIKit headers to the Mac version of UIKit
  • Port the UIKit tbd (linker symbols definition file) to the Mac framework
  • Set up a project in Xcode that links to the Mac version of UIKit in /System/iOSSupport/PrivateFrameworks/UIKitCore.framework
  • Create a custom linker script that passes the correct arguments to build an iosmac binary instead of a macosx binary
  • (and probably a lot more)

My recommendation is simple: do not even think about it. Why? Because I have built a much, much better and safer way…

When learning about iOSMac and its similarity with the iOS Simulator, I had a hunch one would be able to make an iOS Simulator app run as an iOSMac app. I studied the built-in iOSMac apps on Mojave intently, and, from what I knew about the Mach-O binary format, I was pretty sure that I could perform the requisite changes statically on an existing binary. Enter marzipanify.

marzipanify

marzipanify is a tool I created to statically convert an iOS app built for the iOS Simulator to macOS. It means you can continue working on and building your existing iOS app from its existing project, using the existing iOS SDK, and just run the tool against the Simulator build to create a functioning Mac app. As a bonus, marzipanify will yell at you when you're linking against a framework or library that doesn't currently exist in the iOSMac runtime. It trivializes the process so you can focus on adapting your app rather than managing a build environment.

How does marzipanify work?

marzipanify does five important things:

  • it repackages your iOS app in a format macOS will be happy with
  • it redirects all your framework links to their places in the iOSMac runtime
  • it rewrites the mach header of your binaries to change the flag that determines whether they are macosx or iosmac binaries
  • it updates your Info.plist with the appropriate keys for iosmac apps
  • it re-signs your app with the private entitlement all iosmac apps require

It performs these steps recursively on your binary and its embedded frameworks.

Everything marzipanify does can be done by hand, too. Repackaging is just a lot of moving files around and creating the correct folder structure, redirecting libraries can be done with install_name_tool, and modifying the mach header can be done with a disassembler and hex editor. Indeed, that is the process by which I gradually figured out the steps in the first place. If you look at the source code, much of marzipanify is calling out to other commandline tools to do the hard work.

Using marzipanify

The easy way, if your app and its dependencies target iOS 12.0 as the minimum OS:

The more likely way, if your app needs to target an older iOS:

If your app has everything it needs included in the iOSMac runtime in Mojave, you should now have an app you can double-click and run.

Whoa whoa whoa, back up a bit. INJECT_MARZIPAN_GLUE? Explain.

In iOS 12, Apple updated the default output of the Xcode linker to use a new load command called LC_BUILD_VERSION instead of the traditional LC_VERSION_MIN_IPHONEOS and LC_VERSION_MIN_MACOSX, to prep for an environment where a single binary can run on both iOS and macOS. All the iOSMac apps included in Mojave use this method, and it's what the system expects for all iOSMac apps. The catch is that apps targeting an OS before iOS 12 use the other load command, and it's not trivial to add a whole new load command to an existing binary.

To solve this problem in a simplistic way, marzipanify has a mode where it builds a library and injects it into your app at conversion time. This library uses interposing to trick dyld, the linker, into thinking the app is running as an iosmac binary even when it's still a macosx binary. It works! It's a hack! But clearly, there be dragons.

Tune-up

Depending on how complex your app is, at this point you could be looking at a CrashReporter window and scratching your head. The thing is, not every iOS framework exists in iOSMac yet. In fact, other than WebKit, MapKit and AVFoundation, you don't have a lot to work with in this first iteration of iOSMac. Even if all the frameworks neccessary for your app are there, you might be using a number of classes that are omitted or deprecated, like UIFeedbackGenerator, UIWebView, or MFComposeViewController. At this stage, your only option is to start #ifdefing out portions of your codebase.

With enough of your app's non-essential features disabled, with any luck you should be greeted by something onscreen, and with a little cleanup you may just have a working app. Louis D'hauwe's Pixure (sadly no longer available) is one such success. James Thomson was also able to port the iOS version of PCalc to macOS with marzipanify, much like Peter Steinberger did for PSPDFKit's viewer app.

Advanced Functionality

One very interesting benefit of how 'INJECT_MARZIPAN_GLUE' works in marzipanify is that you can customize the source code you want to inject into the target app. How is this useful? Well, it allows you to patch apps that you may not have the source code to. In fact, I used this mechanism to 'port' Apple's own Contacts app to macOS. While this probably isn't something you need to know about in your own work, personally I like to keep a separation between the crazy hacks and patches I might need for bringup of a particular app, and its clean, shipping iOS project.

Make it sing

When Apple announced UIKit on the Mac, they mentioned a list of features to make a UIKit app feel more at home on the desktop, with menus and toolbars, mouse events and more. However, you may have realized that these classes are not included in the iOS SDK, and thus can't be used in your iOS Simulator build. I will detail how you can use the new Mac-specific classes to make your app look much more like a Mac app in a future post.

Conclusion

Emulate Iphone On Mac

For now, I hope I've given you a superficial overview of what marzipanify is and what it can do: it's a very simple tool to kickstart your UIKit app bringup on macOS months before the SDK becomes public. It's certainly not all you need to make a great UIKit Mac app, but it's enough to get you started and thinking about the changes and redesigns you might need to make to your app and its layout to prepare it for a future on the Mac.

Macos Ios Simulator Torrent

There's a bright future for UIKit on the Mac, and I genuinely believe that the quick & dirty ports that we've seen so far (even from Apple) are only scratching the surface of what's possible. But for now, developers gotta develop, so onwards with your quick & dirty ports and start experimenting. As always, you can find me at @stroughtonsmith.