Can't Create New iOS simulator on Xcode

Question

I have this fresh installation of Xcode and I'm unable to create new simulators, I press the button to create any new simulator but nothing happens. I'm new on Mac but I have some experience on Linux, so if something need to be changed on terminal I think I can do it if you tell me what.

Create Simulator Screen: Create Simulator Screen

Components Screen: Component Screen

Also I'm having some other bugs, like, every time that I open Simulator I have this message "Unable to Determine Device".

• Sour LeangChhean: It seem your ios simulator not yet download.
• Sour LeangChhean: so if you not yet download , you will be not able to create new simulator.
• chr0m1ng: @SourLeangChhean In my list of simulators only show iOS 10.1 or less and if I try to download any of those I can't, because it get stuck at the beginning of the download and I got this network error imgur.com/BQTQaXK
• chr0m1ng: I just used other user and the simulator worked well, thanks for all the answers!

Answer 1

2024 Solution: Download More Simulator Runtimes

Just had this issue when trying to run an App (in our case Flutter) in the iOS Simulator:

no-ios

iOS is not available from the OS Version selector.

This is the case when attempting to create a New Simulator for any iOS device:

Simulator: Version 15.0 (1015.2) SimulatorKit 935.1 CoreSimulator 920.6 simulator-version

So I opened Xcode and the only available devices were Apple Watch 🤷‍♂️ xcode-only-watchos

Click the "+" (new device/simulator) in the bottom left corner: new-device

In the OS Versions selector it says "No Runtimes":

no-runtimes

Click on the "Download more simulator runtimes" from the "OS Versions" selector: download-more-simulator-runtimes

Click "get" to download the iOS 17 Runtime: download

It took a ages to download ... ⏳

And eventually shows a "verifying" message:

veryfiying

After it successfully downloaded, still got the following error message: "Unable to boot device ..." error-unable-to-boot

Quit both Simulator and Xcode and restart the Simulator you will now see all iOS devices. simulator-ios-devices-available

With that the iOS Simulator works as expected. 🎉

• HangarRash: FYI - this is not really a "2023 solution". The need to download simulators on the Platforms tab of Xcode settings has been in place for years.
• MerdanDev: Thanks for your help, in my case there was two simulator one was last version second new, and I am downloading new one now.
• nelsonic: @HangarRash I included "2023" because none of the older solutions worked for me so I took the time to write-up what did work. And as others have pointed out, it's useful to them. :-)
• HangarRash: @nelsonic I wasn't commenting on the usefulness of your answer. I just don't understand the need to declare the answer with a year. We can see when you posted the answer and the solution isn't specific to anything that is only available in 2023.

Answer 2

Try to restart the simulator service:

sudo killall -9 com.apple.CoreSimulator.CoreSimulatorService

Answer 3

Solution from 2023 #2 Sonoma 14.0

I had situation when it wasn't be able to create any device on simulator page. Create button was active but not clickable

Solution was:

• Open XCode, and go to the settings (or shortcut: cmd + ,);
• Select Components (older Platforms) tab. And be sure you have iOS-latest-version was installed;
• If iOS-latest-version not installed click get button next to it.

After you could be able to install any device. More details in Apple Developers Page

• benathon: I'm on Sonoma 14.1.2. After the download completed XCode still wouldn't launch in the simulator. My solution was to just restart my mac, and it worked after that
• Tony Gaeta: This likely is the correct answer. If you choose to install XCode but forego iPhone development, you won't have the necessary modules loaded for the Simulator to run correctly.
• kontur: The settings tab in question has been renamed to Components as of this writing.
• Marcel: This solved it for me as well, I probably cleaned up a bit too much lately. Also @kontur hint was a nice helper

Answer 4

This is likely because your app's target is set to a version higher than the simulator supports.

For example below:

a. After adding ios simulator 11.2 and adding an iPhone 5s while the app's target is still 12.2, you can see the simulators on lower OS version doesn't show up. Target set higher

Can't find added iPhone 5s

b. After changing target to 11.2

Changed target

Added iPhone 5s now visible Now visible

• Dzondzula: I've been asking myself why I only see iphone 15 and iOS 17 only... xcode kept ios 15 but my app is iOS 16

Answer 5

Can you file a radar and include the output of sudo sysdiagnose -q and xcrun simctl diagnose? That last command might not work if you are on Xcode 8.2, in which case grab ~/Library/Logs/CoreSimulator/**. Also include the output of xcrun simctl list.

You should see some Simulators listed by default. The fact that you don't means there is something wrong with CoreSimulator or with Xcode's connection.

If simctl shows devices with no problems that is one thing. If it shows the default devices as unavailable then that is something entirely different. You can also run Simulator.app directly (Spotlight should find it for you) and see what devices it shows in the menu.

Close Xcode and Console.app. Run xcode-select -p and make sure it matches the location of Xcode, which should be /Applications/Xcode.app. If not, run sudo xcode-select -s <path_to_xcode.app>. Run sudo killall -9 com.apple.CoreSimulator.CoreSimulatorService. Then open Xcode and see if you can see the devices listed.

You might also try reinstalling Xcode if nothing else works. Each version of Xcode ships with a built-in Simulator runtime for each platform. In this case 10.2, meaning you should have a number of iOS 10.2 Simulators pre-created and ready to use.

Answer 6

I know this question is old, but just in case... this is what worked for me:

When you have the option of pressing the create button and it doesn't work, tick the "Paired Apple Watch" button and click next. For some reason, merely the act of progressing to that next dialogue seemed to spawn all the available devices... no idea why unfortunately. You can then cancel the dialogue and pick one of the devices and it will build perfectly.

Hope this works for someone!

• Jonathan Ramos: :-O ... This actually works for me... wow edit: cheered to soon, I just get to the next screen that's all
• nelsonic: Didn't work for me either. @JonathanRamos did you figure it out?

Answer 7

According to your first screenshot, you're trying to create an iPhone 4S simulator for iOS 10.2.

Trouble is, iOS 10 does not support iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and a few other devices.

You should be seeing an error thrown from Xcode that looks like this:

Incompatible Device error

Hopefully you already have other simulators from compatible devices for iOS 10.2 available to you on your Xcode setup.

• chr0m1ng: I don´t see anything, even if I choose iPhone 5/5s/6/6s/7 or whatever. I´m pressing "Create" and nothing is happening, not even a message is showing up.
• Michael Dautermann: are you using a real Macintosh or a Hackintosh? Also, just as an experiment, can you create a second user on your machine (e.g. a second user that you can log into) and then launch Xcode for the first time on that and try creating a new simulator? I want to see if this is a system problem or if it's a problem only for your user account on your Mac.
• chr0m1ng: I'm using a real Macintosh, I'll try it later, but the first time I run xcode on my acc I got that same error

Answer 8

In my case I had symlinked my ~/Library/Developer folder to an external drive. Once I put that back to normal; Xcode and the simulator returned to normal behavior.

Answer 9

I had a similar issue: impossible to create a new device after a computer upgrade.

I used xcode, in the settings section, to download new versions of iOS... To be able to create a new device.

The old one was simply deleted, creating a device with the already installed version is working... just not intuitive since it was not selectable with recent iphones versions!

Answer 10

The error was something with my current Mac User. I tried with another user and worked!

• chr0m1ng: funny how this was the only solution for my own question but still got downvoted twice. Like, I know it worked cause I'm the OP lol

Answer 11

The different iPhones only support a certain versions of iOS. You have to find the supported version for iPhone 4s and download that same version of the iOS simulator in the Components screen - there is a small download arrow on the left side of the iOS version.

E.g. The maximum supported iOS version for an iPhone 4s is iOS 9.3.5 so you need to download the iOS Simulator of that version (in your case the iOS 9.3 Simulator).

At least that worked for me.

Here is the link to see a list of the different Apple devices and their supported iOS versions: https://everyi.com/by-capability/maximum-supported-ios-version-for-ipod-iphone-ipad.html