Learn about the Xcode development experience and the iOS development environment before becoming a member of the iOS Developer Program Test your app using developer tools that are available only for Simulator At a Glanceīy simulating the operation of your app in Simulator, you can:įind major problems in your app during design and early testing These settings and files exist on every device you test within a simulation environment. 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. Simulator enables you to simulate iOS, watchOS, and tvOS devices running current and some legacy operating systems. Think of the simulator as a preliminary testing tool to use before testing your app on an actual device. 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. Simulator allows you to rapidly prototype and test builds of your app during the development process. For Xcode 9 and later, see Simulator Help by choosing Help > Simulator Help in Simulator. Important The information in this document is deprecated in Xcode 9.