Is it possible to run the Windows Phone 8 simulator directly in OS X?

Question

I'd like to test web sites in Mobile IE. I do not need or want Windows 8 loaded, just Windows Phone 8.

• I understand I can run Windows Phone 8 Simulator inside a Windows 8 VM. That is not my question.
• I understand Windows Phone 8 Simulator is an x86 build of Windows Phone 8. This should, theoretically, make it easier to launch on an x86 Mac within an x86 based virtualization environment.

Can I run Windows Phone 8 on Mac, directly?

Selfseeking

Seems like you are on the edge of knowledge about this one... :( – Recognizance

Answer 1

Yes, the Windows Phone 8 Simulator / Windows Phone 8 Emulator can run directly in OS X. However the mouse cursor is not visible. Mouse works, but no cursor/circle to show where your pointer is, which makes the VM difficult to use. Windows Phone 8 Simulator does the same thing on Windows when launched in Hyper V Manager (rather than Visual Studio). This may change in future. Keyboard support is fine.

I used VMware Fusion 6.01 / OS X Mavericks.

• Get the Flash.vhd file from C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Emulation\Images\Flash.vhd inside Windows 8, and copy it to OS X (I used VMware Fusions Sharing feature to set this up quickly)
• Import the VM into VMware Fusion
• Change the CPU and Memory setting to a minimum of 2 cores, 512 MB (Windows Phone 8's mimum requirement). Before I did this, Windows Phone 8 would pause at the boot screen.

Windows Phone 8 will launch.

Keyboard shortcuts are listed at MSDN. Remember to press Fn on your Mac for function keys.

Selfseeking

Great find, but without mouse and keyboard seems useless, even with shortcuts. Especially when mouse coordinates on host system and in guest do not correspond (anyone know why, btw?) How do you open a browser and navigate to an arbitrary url for example. – Recognizance

What do you mean "Keyboard support is fine." - can you actually type in something? – Recognizance

@Recognizance Yep, I'm not saying it's usable until they keyboard is fixed, however I am trying to share knowledge with others who may also runMacs and want to test for Windows Phone support. Yes, all keyboard input works. – Selfseeking

I mean I can use functional shortcuts, but can't type in a url in the browser for example. Can you? – Recognizance

@dawesi Read my previous comment reply. – Selfseeking

Answer 2

As you don't want to run Windows 8, the response is no, you can't run the emulator directly from Mac OSX. Also the emulator is x64 so you need to have a Windows 8 Pro at least, with HyperV enabled and a CPU SLAT capable.

If you consider the unique option: run Windows 8, you need to verify your processor is SLAT compatible. you can made this going to this page. and searching for your CPU model, in the Advanced technologies section you need to look for Intel VTx and EPT support. If both are supported, you should be able to run windows phone 8 from a Windows 8 machine.

Badillo

"As you don't want to run Windows 8, the response is no, you can't run the emulator directly from Mac OSX." Please provide specific, technical reasons. – Selfseeking

You need a Windows 8 to install the SDK with the emulators. Also the emulators are HyperV virtual machines images, so you need HyperV to run the images. – Badillo

Hyper V virtual images can run under many different emulation environments, including VMware, Virtual Box, QEmu, and more. – Selfseeking

Well, run them and tell us what the result is :) I don't understand your question at this point... if you know you can run the images, what the problem is? Just try it... – Badillo

Was hoping to find out if anyone else had done this before and what the drawbacks were (if any) - I haven't been able to find much in my research. – Selfseeking

I think, if you are able to open the emulator image in a non HyperV VM software, you could have an opportunity of running the emulator, but I don't know if you could get unexpected errors. If you only want to test IE, maybe this work for you. I'm sure you couldn't deploy apps to the emulator. – Badillo