Run .app file in iOS 8 simulator

Question

I have a .app file shared from a developer which i would like to run in iOS 8 simulator. I have seen similar questions which has solutions for older versions of iOS which is no

Answer 1

If the application crashes after installing in the simulator using the command,

xcrun simctl install booted /path/to/Your.app

It's probably because the architecture issues, since we used the device build instead of simulator build.

The basic architecture difference between the iphone simulator and iphone device is

iPhone simulator uses the architecture i386 or x86_x64

whereas,

iPhone device uses the architecture arm64 or armv7 or armv7s

We can find each device architectures in this link. So to over come this problem we need to get the simulator build by changing the xcode build location settings.

SOLUTION :

To change the build location settings, Open your xcode and follow the below steps.

1. Go to xcode preferences.
2. Choose the locations tab.
3. In the 'Derived Data:' section click 'advanced', from the resulting screen choose 'legacy'.
4. Now build the application, after successful build go to 'Your-App-Folder/build/Debug-iphonesimulator' in finder, and copy the build available on the same folder with the extension .app

5. Copy that and run the above command answered by @jeremy.

   xcrun simctl install booted /path/to/Your.app

After running this command, note that your simulator is installed with the build you specified. There you go, run the application in simulator by clicking the corresponding app and use it.

I deliberately write this solution to help the needy, those who are clueless about the architecture issues specified above.

Happy Coding :)