Xcode Simulator: how to remove older unneeded devices?

Question

I'm running Xcode 4.3.1 iOS-Simulator which originally only supports iOS 5.1.

I need to test my code with iOS 4.3, so I used Xcode's "Install" feature to install it as described in "Installing Xcode with iOS 4.3 device simulator?"

Now I'm finished with testing but cannot find a way to uninstall the 4.3 portions ("iPhone 4.3 Simulator" and "iPad 4.3 Simulator"). I want to reduce the clutter in the Scheme menu.

No one on Apple's Xcode listserv knew the answer!

EDIT: note that much has changed since Xcode 4.3, so suggest anyone reading this look at all the answers. The newest ones such as Steve Moser's may be of more use to you!

EDIT 10/2017: Posted on Twitter by Julio Carrettoni‏

If you are an iOS developer, execute this:
$ xcrun simctl delete unavailable
It removes old simulators Xcode no longer use. For me it was 6Gb Did not try it myself...

[Also, I just saw Russ Bishop mentioned this in a comment below already...]

Answer 1

Did you try to just delete the 4.3 SDK from within the Xcode Package?

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs

please also delete the corresponding .dmg file in

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode/Downloads

to prevent Xcode from re-installing the same package again.

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for XCode >= 6 see @praveen-matanam 's answer

Answer 2

In Xcode 6+ you can simply go to Menu > Window > Devices > Simulators and delete a simulator you don't need.

Answer 3

In Xcode 6 and above, you can find and delete the simulators from the path /Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes. Restart Xcode in order to take effect (may not be needed).

Answer 4

October 2020 update

As was mentioned, you can use xcrun to do a few things:

• xcrun simctl list devices or xcrun simctl list --json to list all simulators
• xcrun simctl delete <device udid> to delete specific device
• xcrun simctl delete unavailable to remove old devices for runtimes that are no longer supported

More things you can do with xcrun (see code snippet)

- `xcrun simctl boot <device udid>` to launch (multiple) simulators
- `xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo — type=mp4 ./test.mp4` to record simulator video
- `xcrun simctl io booted screenshot ./screen.png` to make screenshot of simulator
- `xcrun simctl openurl booted https://google.com` to open URL in simulator
- `xcrun simctl addmedia booted ./test.mp4` to upload photo or video file (for photos app)
- `xcrun simctl get_app_container booted <your apps bundle identifier>` to find the app container (where identifier is like *com.bundle.identifier*)
- `xcrun simctl help` to explore **more** commands

Original Answer

September 2017, Xcode 9

Runtimes

You will find them here:

/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes

Devices

To delete devices go here:

~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices

Much easier to delete them use Xcode: Xcode->Window->Devices and Simulators

Helping Xcode "forget" about runtimes and prevent from re-installing them - delete .dmg file(s) here:

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode/Downloads

I hope it will help someone 🙂

Answer 5

Run this command in terminal to remove simulators that can't be accessed from the current version of Xcode (8+?) in use on your machine.

xcrun simctl delete unavailable

Also if you're looking to reclaim simulator related space Michael Tsai found that deleting sim logs saved him 30 GB.

~/Library/Logs/CoreSimulator

Answer 6

Xcode 4.6 will prompt you to reinstall any older versions of the iOS Simulator if you just delete the SDK. To avoid that, you must also delete the Xcode cache. Then you won't be forced to reinstall the older SDK on launch.

To remove the iOS 5.0 simulator, delete these and then restart Xcode:

1. /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/PhoneSimulator5.0.sdk
2. ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode

For example, after doing a clean install of Xcode, I installed the iOS 5.0 simulator from Xcode preferences. Later, I decided that 5.1 was enough but couldn't remove the 5.0 version. Xcode kept forcing me to reinstall it on launch. After removing both the cache file and the SDK, it no longer asked.

Answer 7

I had the same problem. I was running out of space.

Deleting old device simulators did NOT help.

My space issue was caused by xCode. It kept a copy of every iOS version on my macOS since I had installed xCode.

Delete the iOS version you don't want and free up disk space. I saved 50GB+ of space.

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NOTE -> can't you see ~/Library inside Finder? It is hidden by default. Use Terminal and type cd ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS\ DeviceSupport/ or google how to see hidden folders.

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NOTE -> if you have multiple users on a single macOS machine, make sure to find the directory ONLY with the user account that originally installed xCode.

Answer 8

following some of the answers here, deleting some simulators from my Xcode Menu > Window > Devices > Simulators did nothing to help my dying disk space:

however, cd ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS\ DeviceSupport and running du -sh * I got all of these guys:

2.9G    10.0.1 (14A403)
1.3G    10.1.1 (14B100)
2.9G    10.3.2 (14F89)
1.3G    10.3.3 (14G60)
1.9G    11.0.1 (15A402)
1.9G    11.0.3 (15A432)
2.0G    11.1.2 (15B202)
2.0G    11.2 (15C114)
2.0G    11.2.1 (15C153)
2.0G    11.2.2 (15C202)
2.0G    11.2.6 (15D100)
2.0G    11.4 (15F79)
2.0G    11.4.1 (15G77)
2.3G    12.0 (16A366)
2.3G    12.0.1 (16A404)
2.3G    12.1 (16B92)

All together that's 33 GB!

A blood bath ensued

see more details here

Answer 9

In addition to @childno.de answer, your Mac directory

/private/var/db/receipts/

may still contains obsolete iPhoneSimulatorSDK .bom and .plist files like this:

/private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.iPhoneSimulatorSDK8_4.bom /private/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.iPhoneSimulatorSDK8_4.plist

These could make your Downloads tab of Xcode's preferences show a tick (√) for that obsolete simulator version.

To purge the unwanted simulators, you can do a search using this bash command from your Mac terminal:

sudo find / -name "*PhoneSimulator*"

Then go to corresponding directories to manually delete unwanted SimulatorSDKs

Answer 10

In XCode open Window - Devices, then select and remove the outdated simulators.

Answer 11

I wrote up one-line bash script that would delete ALL your simulators:

xcrun simctl list devices | grep -E -o -i "([0-9a-f]{8}-([0-9a-f]{4}-){3}[0-9a-f]{12})" | xargs -L1 xcrun simctl delete

• xcrun simctl list devices will list all the simulators installed on your machine
• grep -E -o -i "([0-9a-f]{8}-([0-9a-f]{4}-){3}[0-9a-f]{12})" will grab the device UUID
• xargs -L1 xcrun simctl delete will attempt to delete the device for each UUID it found

If you want to see everything it'll execute, you can add echo before xcrun, i.e.

xcrun simctl list devices | grep -E -o -i "([0-9a-f]{8}-([0-9a-f]{4}-){3}[0-9a-f]{12})" | xargs -L1 echo xcrun simctl delete

Answer 12

Some people try to fix it using one way, some the second. Basically, there are 2 issues, which if you check them out & solve both - in 99% it should fix this issue:

1. Old device simulators located at YOUR_MAC_NAME (e.g. Macintosh) -> Users -> YOUR_USERNAME (daniel) -> Library -> Developer -> Xcode -> iOS Device Support. Leave there, the newest one, as of today this is 13.2.3 (17B111), but in future it'll change. The highest number (here 13.2.3) of the iOS version indicates that it's newer.

2. After this list your devices in Terminal by running xcrun simctl list devices. Many of them might be unavailable, therefore delete them by running xcrun simctl delete unavailable. It'll free some space as well. To be sure that everything is fine check it again by running xcrun simctl list devices. You should see devices only from the newest version (here 13.2.3) like the screenshot below shows.

As a bonus which is slightly less relevant to this question, but still free's some space. Go to YOUR_MAC_NAME (e.g. Macintosh) -> Users -> YOUR_USERNAME (e.g. daniel) -> Library -> Developer -> Xcode -> Archives. You'll see many archived deployed application, most probably you don't need all of them. Try to delete these ones, which are not being used anymore.

Using these 2 methods and the bonus method I was able to get extra 15 GB of space on my Mac.

PS. Simply deleting simulators from Xcode by going to Xcode -> Window -> Devices and Simulators -> Simulators (or simply CMD + SHIFT + 2 when using keyboard shortcut) and deleting it there won't help. You really need to go for the described steps.

Answer 13

Another thing you can do is to change the Deployment target to the highest value. This will prevent the Scheme Menu from displaying older versions.

To do this go to: Target->Summary then change the Deployment Target.

Answer 14

I tried all answers. None of them worked for me.

What worked for me on Sierra + Xcode 8.2 was going to:

/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices and deleting all devices.

(Maybe this won't work for you, maybe this is a solution as a standalone, or maybe you have to do this in addition to other answers, but I did all solutions here and so not sure what did the deed). Just be aware that some of the answers here are old and the location of simulator has changed. Snowcrash's answer seems to be most recent.

Answer 15

The problem with these answers is that, with every Xcode update, menus and locations will change.

Just go to /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms and delete what you don't need. Xcode will start fine. If you're at all concerned then you can simply restore from Trash.

Answer 16

On Mac, check /Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS\ DeviceSupport

Answer 17

You can use the following snippet to delete unavailable runtimes:

echo "rm -rf $(xcrun simctl list runtimes -j |\
      jq ".runtimes[] | select(.isAvailable|not) | .bundlePath" | xargs)"

to execute, remove echo or add | bash at the end.

If you don't have jq command available, you can get it using brew install jq

Answer 18

1. Open Xcode --> Go to Window (from menu bar) --> Devices and Simulators --> Click on Simulator --> Right-click on the simulator that you want to delete --> Click Delete

2. To delete any unwanted simulators that you installed in the past as an extra Component through Xcode.

• Open Terminal

• Type open /Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes

• Delete undesired simulators

Answer 19

Command+Space

Type 'simulator'

open the old beta simulator you no longer need.

right-click on it in the dock, then choose Options>'Show in Finder'

Close the app, then remove it from the folder.

:)