Cannot open iPhone Control Center on simulator

Question

I'm new to iOS coming from Android. I try to run simulator and open the Control Center on it. When I swipe from the bottom to up I see that it's empty. Any ideas what's going on with my simulator?

I tried at iPhoneX simulator and have the same.

Spancel

not issue in your simulator. don't showing Control Center in simulator. – Auberge

So odd that they don't show Control Center in simulator on X. Is there any way to turn screen rotation on without going to Control Center? – Footer

Current versions of iOS - 16.x - Control Center is top right swipe down. However, as mentioned in answers and other comments, there are no controls. – Amedeo

Answer 1

Unfortunately the Simulator does not show a true Control Center. Yes, a blank screen appears, but no controls are available in there. Welcome to iOS ;]

Sonstrom

So without a real device it's not possible to create and test an app. Or it will be very limited. It seems that it's not possible to test notifications. It's not a very good news. Thanks for the answer :) – Spancel

@Spancel what exactly limits you? You cannot create app extension for control center, so I see no point in control center to show any of the given buttons... except for volume. And yep the things about flight mode. – Quarterback

Then how can I control orientation lock? – Misguided

They didn't even left any message there like "sorry center isn't available in simulator", just a blank screen which makes many developers confused – Misguided

Even if the simulator had perfect feature parity with a real device, it's necessary in practice to test on real hardware. For instance, the simulator was originally case insensitive but the hardware was case sensitive. Try to access Foo.plist as foo.plist, it would work on the simulator but not on the device. Apple fixed that, but we have really no idea what's left. There used to be differences in the behaviour of double x = [thing foo] if thing was nil (in the simulator, you'd get zero as you'd expect; on the device, you might not). The simulator is just a simulator, not a hardware emulator. – Dulcie

@StevenFisher I agree to the point that simulator is just a simulator. But it makes the initial testing of any changes much faster compared to the device. Also, regarding the case sensitivity difference simulator is not having feature parity with device. – Barabbas

Yeah, my point was it doesn't have feature parity. And even if it did, it still wouldn't be good enough. I do a lot of initial development with the simulator, though. You just need to test with a real device often enough that you don't have many minor bugs in there before testing, because it's very hard once it becomes a multi-variable problem. – Dulcie

Answer 2

I needed to do this specifically to do a screen recording, but I realised you can't do it that way. So I found out about this way https://medium.com/@skounis/take-a-screenshot-or-record-video-with-ios-simulator-90c196e03b67 for anyone looking to do the same.

xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo <filename>.<extension>

To stop recording, press Control-C in Terminal.

PS - for iPhone X emulator you need to swipe from the top right down (even though that doesn't get you what you want)

Inexpugnable

Is this equivalent to clicking on File -> Record Screen on the simulator top menu on macOS ? – Zoe

Yes correct, but I either didn't know about it in 2019, or it wasn't yet available – Inexpugnable

Answer 3

The problem not in Xcode but in iOS 11 simulator

Solved

I download iOS 10 simulator and control-center work good in Xcode 9.3

Hirai

Please add steps to open Control Center and a screenshot of what is visible. – Amedeo

Answer 4

Control Center is not available in iOS Simulator but if you are looking for notification center, you can get it by swiping top-down on iOS simulator. You can test local notifications on simulator

Esthete

Question relates to Control Center, not Notification Center. – Amedeo