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:

Components Screen:

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

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

2024 Solution: Download More Simulator Runtimes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click "get" to download the iOS 17 Runtime:

It took a ages to download ... ⏳

And eventually shows a "verifying" message:

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

Quit both Simulator and Xcode and restart the Simulator you will now see all iOS devices.

With that the iOS Simulator works as expected. 🎉

Answer 3

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 4

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!

Answer 5

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 6

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

Answer 7

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.

b. After changing target to 11.2

Added iPhone 5s now visible

Answer 8

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

Answer 9

Try to restart the simulator service:

sudo killall -9 com.apple.CoreSimulator.CoreSimulatorService

Answer 10

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 11

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:

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