The iOS Simulator, without Simulator.app.
SimFriend puts every iOS simulator on your Mac in one sidebar, boots them, and gives you a live screen you can click and type into — plus the things Simulator.app makes you work for: clean status bars, light and dark screenshot pairs, and every booted device in one grid.
Free, with no trial and nothing to buy. If it’s useful, my other apps come together in a bundle.
Every simulator, one list
Each iPhone and iPad CoreSimulator knows about, grouped by runtime, with favourites pinned to the top. Boot and shut down from the row — no menu diving.
A live screen, not a screenshot
The guest’s own framebuffer, composited by the window server. Click it, type into it, drag on it. Rotation, hardware buttons and the software keyboard are on the toolbar.
All booted at once
Every running device in one grid, live. A command applies to the whole set — so a light and dark screenshot pair across five devices is one keystroke, not twenty.
Screenshots without the hassle
Straight to a folder you choose, named and timestamped. Capture light and dark back to back and they come out as a matching pair. Record the screen the same way.
A clean status bar
9:41, full bars, full battery, no carrier — the one App Store screenshots want, one click away and one click back.
Clipboard and files both ways
Copy on the Mac, paste on the device, images included. Drag a build in and it installs; drag a photo in and it lands in the library; drag a document in and it goes to whichever app opens it.
Screenshots
Get SimFriend
Free — no trial, no licence, nothing to buy. Requires macOS 13 or later and Xcode with at least one simulator runtime installed. It updates itself. Not on the Mac App Store, and it never will be: SimFriend reaches into the frameworks Simulator.app is built on, which the store does not allow.
Looking for more apps? Get over twenty other apps in my bundle.
Support
Questions or bug reports? Email ben.dansby@gmail.com and you’ll get a reply, usually within a day or two.
SimFriend talks only to the simulators on your own Mac. It has no account, no analytics and no network of its own beyond checking for its own updates.