About Simulator

Simulator allows you to rapidly prototype and test builds of your app during the development process. Installed as part of the Xcode tools, Simulator runs on your Mac and behaves like a standard Mac app while simulating an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Apple TV environment. Think of the simulator as a preliminary testing tool to use before testing your app on an actual device.

Simulator enables you to simulate iOS, watchOS, and tvOS devices running current and some legacy operating systems. Each combination of a simulated device and software version is considered its own simulation environment, independent of the others, with its own settings and files. These settings and files exist on every device you test within a simulation environment.

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At a Glance

By simulating the operation of your app in Simulator, you can:

This guide walks you through Simulator, starting with the basics of how to use it and moving on to the tools found within the simulator that can assist you in testing and debugging your apps.

Organization of This Document

Read the following chapters to learn how to use Simulator:

See Also

Apple provides these related documents that you may find helpful: