DevSim

A menu bar app for jumping straight into iOS/watchOS/tvOS simulator app folders.

Click the menu bar icon, pick an app, land in its container.

   

Requirements

• macOS 13 Ventura or later
• Xcode command line tools, for simctl — it powers the screenshot, boot, uninstall and erase actions

Install

Grab DevSim.zip from the latest release, unzip it, and move DevSim.app to /Applications.

The release build is signed ad-hoc rather than with a Developer ID, so macOS quarantines it after download and refuses to open it. Clear the quarantine flag once:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/DevSim.app

Build from source

Building it yourself avoids the quarantine step entirely:

Scripts/build-app.sh --install

That compiles a release build, assembles DevSim.app, renders the icon, ad-hoc signs the bundle, copies it to /Applications and launches it. Leave off --install to build into ./build without touching /Applications.

Building needs Swift 6.2 or newer (Xcode 26+), because the package manifest uses defaultIsolation. The app itself still runs on macOS 13.

To work on it in Xcode, open Package.swift. Running the scheme launches the menu bar app directly — no bundle needed.

Using it

Click the menu bar icon. Each booted or recently used simulator gets a section, listing the apps you have installed on it, then its app groups and app extensions.

Clicking an app row opens its data container in Finder. Hold a modifier to change that:

Modifier	Opens in
—	Finder
⌥	Terminal
⌃	Commander One (when installed)

App actions

Each app, app group and app extension row has a submenu:

• Finder / Terminal / iTerm / Ghostty / Warp / VS Code / … — whichever of the supported file managers, terminals and editors are installed on this Mac
• TablePlus / DB Browser / Realm Studio — shown when the container holds .sqlite, .store, .db or .realm files, opening them in whichever viewer you have
• Copy Path to Clipboard
• Show App Bundle — reveals the installed .app itself
• Take Screenshot — simctl screenshot of a booted simulator, saved to the Desktop
• Reset Application Data — deletes Documents, Library and tmp, leaving the app installed
• Delete Application — uninstalls the app from that simulator entirely

Simulator actions

The simulator row itself opens the device folder, and its submenu holds device-level actions:

• Open Device Folder / Copy Device UDID
• Take Screenshot
• Boot Simulator / Shut Down Simulator
• Erase Simulator — erases all content and settings, the same as Simulator's own Erase All Content and Settings

Deleting an app and erasing a simulator both ask for confirmation first, and both run in the background — the menu bar icon dims while simctl is working.

simctl is particular about device state, so DevSim moves the device where it needs to be and puts it back afterwards. Deleting an app from a shut down simulator boots it, uninstalls, and shuts it down again; erasing a booted simulator shuts it down, erases, and boots it again. A cold boot takes the better part of a minute, so those operations are not instant.

Troubleshooting

DevSim --dump-menu prints the same menu as text, which is handy when something is not showing up where you expect it.

Notes on behaviour

• Simulator discovery walks ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices directly rather than reading the Simulator.app preferences file, so devices booted by xcodebuild or simctl show up too. Booted devices sort first, and devices with no apps installed never take a slot.
• App icons come from the rendered variants Xcode copies to the bundle root. Apps whose icon only lives in Assets.car, and apps with no icon at all, get a generated letter tile.
• Not sandboxed. Resetting app data, deleting apps and erasing simulators all need write access to ~/Library/Developer, which the App Sandbox does not grant.

Layout

Sources/DevSim/
  main.swift            entry point (also handles --dump-menu)
  AppDelegate.swift     status item and menu lifecycle
  Settings.swift        login item, via SMAppService
  Models/               Simulator, Application, AppGroup, AppExtension
  Services/             scanning, filesystem, icon loading, app lookup, simctl
  UI/                   menu construction and menu item actions
Scripts/
  build-app.sh          builds and optionally installs DevSim.app
  make-icon.swift       renders AppIcon.icns
.github/workflows/
  ci.yml                builds, smoke tests and packages on every push
  release.yml           publishes DevSim.zip when a v* tag is pushed

Releases

Pushing a v* tag builds the app on a macOS runner and publishes DevSim.zip with its SHA-256 to a GitHub release:

git tag v2.0.1 && git push origin v2.0.1

The tag sets the bundle's CFBundleShortVersionString, and the workflow fails if the two disagree. Scripts/build-app.sh reads DEVSIM_VERSION and DEVSIM_BUILD for the same purpose locally.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

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DevSim's menu and workflow are based on SimSim by Daniil Smelov.