iOS Device Simulator for Mac

Happen to be on a Mac and want to test your website on iOS devices while developing? There’s an easy way to do it with the Simulator app.

Here’s how to fire everything up. First, you’ll have to make sure you have Xcode installed. If you don’t have it yet, you can find it on the app store. Then fire up Xcode, right-click on the dock icon and choose Open Developer Tool > Simulator:

Et voilà! Simply launch Safari on the simulator and point it to your local server instance:

You can even choose between a range of iOS devices in the Hardware menu:

It’s now part of my typical workflow to launch an instance of the simulator when working on something. This way I get a much better idea how things will turn out at least on iPhones / iPads.

👉 Quick shortcut: when you fire up the simulator you’ll notice that a new icon appears in the dock. I’ve set the icon to stay in the dock, and now I can launch the simulator without even launching Xcode first.