In OS X 10.10 (Yosemite Beta), How do I Test Using iOS 6.1 Simulator?

Question

I am trying to target iOS 6.1 using Xcode 5 in Yosemite Beta. However, the simulator won't even run the app, or show the default icons (all I get is a black iOS-shaped screen, and Home or Lock buttons are not working). The 7.1 simulator works fine.

I have also noticed that Xcode 6 Beta does not even offer simulator versions prior to 7.1.

Does this indicate that, even in the final of OS X 10.10, it will be impossible to simulate iOS versions prior to 7.x? This seems very unreasonable to me.

Is this expected behavior?

EDIT: So I had already tried re-installing and re-downloading the 6.1 simulator before posting this question, which did nothing to change the situation. I also checked other similar questions that dealt with the upgrade to Mavericks (OS X 10.9) but the versions supported seem oddly chosen.

I will submit the question to Apple and report back my findings, unless someone else replies who has more concrete information on this specific case.

Berserker

possible duplicate of "iOS 6.0 Simulator" not visible/installable in Xcode 5.0.2 – Pothouse

I wouldn't say it is a duplicate, since it discusses different versions of both iOS and OS X. – Berserker

Would appreciate explanation for downvote, thanks. – Berserker

Hi Brendan, I think you've been hard done by. This is clearly not a duplicate of the 5.0.2 issue, since Yosemite wasn't out then. I can't say why you were down voted, and I've been blocked by this problem too. Here is my upvote. – Catenary

Still haven't heard back from Apple on the bug I submitted (probably never will), and the Final release of XCode 6 is live without any changes to this. So...yeah. – Berserker

Yosemite Final should be out very soon, and I will update this question to reflect any changes. At this point I am not expecting to hear from Apple regarding the bug I filed, as it was 3 months ago. If I do, I will update this question/answer. – Berserker

Updated to Yosemite final. Facing the same problem of black screen for iOS 6.1 :( – Gautier

Answer 1

As far as I have experienced, The iPhone simulator always have this kind of issue on every update of OS X, since the core of iPhone simulator is using the core of OS X, and it only support the latest two version. That is,

10.10 -> iOS 7, iOS 8.

10.9 -> iOS 6, iOS 7.

Meanwhile, Xcode obviously only support for downloading the latest two version simulator, which means you can get iOS 6 simulator in Xcode 5, but not in Xcode 6.

However you can get the old simulator by copy/paste the old SDKs into the correct folder, but this still follows the OSX-iOS relation. That is, if you have the iOS 6 simulator SDK, you can run the iOS 6 simulator on OSX 10.9, but not OSX 10.10.

Kerby

Thanks for this information. Yosemite was released yesterday and I plan to check one final time this weekend. If it is still the case, I'll certainly accept this answer. – Berserker

Answer 2

iOS Simualtor runtimes older than iOS 7.0 will not work with Xcode 6. iOS Simulator runtimes older than iOS 7.1 will not work on OS X Yosemite.

Older versions of the iOS Simulator runtime cannot be made to work with Xcode 6 nor on OS X Yosemite without significant changes to those legacy runtimes.

You can still build your apps to support older iOS versions by setting an older deployment target, but you will not be able to test them on a simulated device running on OS X Yosemite. You can test on a physical device running iOS 6.1, or you can run Xcode 5.1.1 in OS X Mavericks to test your project in the older simulator.

Unceremonious