SimTool

A beautiful and powerful TUI for managing iOS Simulators

Navigate your iOS simulators, browse apps, explore files, and preview content—all from your terminal.

✨ Features

🚀 Simulator Management

• List all iOS simulators with status indicators (running/stopped)
• Boot simulators directly from the TUI
• Smart filtering to show only simulators with apps
• Real-time search by name, runtime, or state

📱 App Browsing

• Browse installed apps with detailed information
• View app metadata: Bundle ID, version, size, last modified date
• All Apps view: See apps from all simulators in one place
• Open in Finder: Quick access to app containers
• Lightning-fast search across all app properties

📁 File Explorer

• Navigate app containers with an intuitive file browser
• Breadcrumb navigation for easy orientation
• Smart file previews based on content type
• Quick Finder access for any file or folder

🎨 Rich File Viewing

⚡ Additional Features

• Property List Support: Automatic binary plist → XML conversion
• Binary File Viewer: Hex dump with ASCII preview
• Dynamic Theming: 60+ themes, auto dark/light mode switching
• Vim Navigation: Full keyboard control with customizable shortcuts
• Responsive Design: Adapts to any terminal size
• Lightning Fast: Instant navigation and lazy loading

Requirements

• macOS 13.0 or later
• Full Xcode with an iOS Simulator runtime; the Command Line Tools alone do not include simctl
• Go 1.27.1, installed through mise, for building from source

Installation

Homebrew (Recommended)

brew install azizuysal/tap/simtool

To update:

brew upgrade simtool

Go Install

go install github.com/azizuysal/simtool/cmd/simtool@latest

Download Binary

Download simtool_<version>_darwin_all.tar.gz from Releases, extract it with tar -xzf, and move simtool to a directory on your PATH.

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/azizuysal/simtool.git
cd simtool
mise install
mise exec -- make install

Verifying releases

Release artifacts are signed with Cosign using Sigstore's keyless signing. There are no long-lived keys — each signature's identity is tied to the specific GitHub Actions workflow run that produced the release, recorded in the public Sigstore transparency log.

New releases ship a checksums.txt.sigstore.json bundle alongside the archives. Signing the checksums file protects every artifact transitively via SHA-256.

To verify a new release:

# One-time: brew install cosign

# From the release page, download: the archive, checksums.txt, checksums.txt.sigstore.json
# Replace vX.Y.Z with the release tag you downloaded.
cosign verify-blob \
  --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity 'https://github.com/azizuysal/simtool/.github/workflows/release.yml@refs/tags/vX.Y.Z' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
  checksums.txt

# If verification succeeds, confirm the archive matches:
shasum -a 256 -c checksums.txt --ignore-missing

For the older v1.1.1 release, use its legacy checksums.txt.pem and checksums.txt.sig sidecars:

cosign verify-blob \
  --certificate checksums.txt.pem \
  --signature checksums.txt.sig \
  --certificate-identity 'https://github.com/azizuysal/simtool/.github/workflows/release.yml@refs/tags/v1.1.1' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
  checksums.txt

Homebrew installs don't need manual verification — the tap formula pins each release to a specific SHA-256, so any tampering after the fact is caught by brew install itself.

In addition to signatures, each release includes a CycloneDX SBOM sidecar (*.cdx.json) cataloging every dependency baked into the binary.

📖 Usage

Quick Start

# Launch SimTool
simtool

# Start with all apps view
simtool --apps

Keyboard Shortcuts

All shortcuts are customizable.

⚙️ Configuration

SimTool uses a TOML configuration file located at ~/.config/simtool/config.toml.

# Start with all apps view by default
[startup]
initial_view = "all_apps"

# Theme configuration
[theme]
mode = "auto"  # auto, dark, or light
dark_theme = "dracula"
light_theme = "github"

# Custom key bindings
[keys]
up = ["up", "k"]
down = ["down", "j"]
quit = ["q", "ctrl+c"]

Generate an example configuration:

simtool --generate-config

See Configuration Guide for all options.

🎨 Themes

SimTool includes 60+ beautiful syntax highlighting themes. Popular choices:

Dark: dracula, monokai, github-dark, nord, tokyo-night
Light: github, solarized-light, tango, papercolor-light

List all themes:

simtool --list-themes

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read the Contributing Guide for details on the development process.

Development Setup

git clone https://github.com/azizuysal/simtool.git
cd simtool
mise install
mise exec -- make build

See Development Guide for architecture details.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Built with Bubble Tea - The delightful TUI framework
• Syntax highlighting by Chroma
• Styled with Lipgloss

🌟 Star History

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Made with ❤️ by Aziz Uysal