Take the 2-minute tour ×

There are a few questions relating to this topic but nothing quite the same when it comes down to the details:

We would like to use the iOS Simulator without installing the rest of XCode on a macbook. It is an in-house laptop, and will be used by employees, but not engineers.

We already know how to run applications on the simulator without the source code and compiling required, but it would be nice to be able to install a 100MB app and application support that can run our in-house distribution app as opposed to a 2.4GB XCode installation. Any ideas? Thanks.

share|improve this question

2 Answers 2

up vote 6 down vote accepted

The Simulator app requires several other large directories from the Xcode distribution in order to work at all. The only official way to install all of those properly is to install the entire SDK from the dmg. Then you can experiment with deleting the hopefully "unneeded" directories. Be prepared to start over if you delete something that the Simulator requires.

share|improve this answer
Yes this sounds like the only option I came up with as well. I was hoping there was a simpler solution. Thanks! –  Rhodes Dec 22 '10 at 23:34
Could there be any way to compile a version of the Simulator app and statically link in all dependencies, so that it would run without the rest of Xcode? –  Joshua Frank Dec 27 '12 at 15:06

You would have to extract the Simulator pkg from the Xcode DMG. The only thing is that the Simulator depends on having an SDK installed, that way it knows which iOS to run the app in.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer


