iOS 9 Simulator in Xcode 10.3 missing

Question

I am unable to download and install a iOS 9 simulator in current Xcode.

This is driving me nuts.

The Release notes for Xcode 10.3 say that it supports on-device debugging for iOS 8 and later (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode_release_notes/xcode_10_3_release_notes/). So I suppose that should include iOS 9 simulators?

but it's not available to download for me:

What I tried:

Upgrading macOS to the most recent version (10.14.6)
Rebooting
Downloading an older Simulator image and copying it to Xcode, so that might pick it up (https://gist.github.com/NicholasTD07/3ffbaee9973ae06b5a12)
Downloading Xcode 7 and copying the SDK and Simulator SDK into my current Xcode (https://stackoverflow.com/a/13061104/4202492)
Also copying the simruntime folder (https://stackoverflow.com/a/26530576/4202492)

I think, simulators for iOS 9.3 and earlier were removed because of issue noted in XCode 10.2.1 Release Notes: Simulators for iOS 9.3 and earlier might fail to launch Swift apps with the message: “dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libauto.dylib”. (49326587) - see developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode_release_notes/… — Alexander Ushakov
yea, i've seen that note as well. it made me think that they still support iOS 9 simulators, as that was just the prior release and there was no deprecation warning in the 10.3 release notes. — Marco
Unfortunately, Apple has long history of silent removing simulators so I’m not surprised — Alexander Ushakov

Marco Marco · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-31T17:18:31

Apple seems to have a history of removing simulators without announcing it.

Anyway, the solution was quite simple: