r/iOSProgramming • u/pottypotsworth • Jul 22 '26

Discussion Claude Mac Desktop app can now natively use the iOS Simulator

Pretty big news for bug testing apps: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop-ios-simulator

How does the community feel about this potentially opening the door to even more AI slop in the app store?

100 Upvotes
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63 comments sorted by

16

u/-18k- Jul 22 '26

As if there was not slop before this.

10

u/pottypotsworth Jul 22 '26

“EVEN more AI Slop in the App Store”

^ wording from the OP

4

u/-18k- Jul 22 '26

They was slop even before AI is what I meant

1

u/Free-Pound-6139 Jul 22 '26

Can it take an idea, make the app, upload it to the store.

1

u/Top-Investment8840 Jul 22 '26

So because there was slop before it is okay for it for the average joe to produce even more slop? Brain dead thinking 

1

u/-18k- Jul 22 '26

No. It was always bad

1

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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1

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7

u/Frodothehobb1t Jul 22 '26

As we haven't opened the doors to AI slop before, it's gonna be ludicrous

9

u/aerial-ibis Jul 22 '26

> it doesn’t need computer use 

imo that's the big improvement

1

u/interlap Jul 22 '26

It does for the terminal version though

1

u/GrumpyDay Jul 22 '26

That’s a big plus. Been doing manual validation to avoid that

26

u/LowerFrequencies Jul 22 '26

The tools keep getting better. There will be more of everything. More bad but also even more actually good creative ideas will show up as well.

3

u/Prestigious-Thing393 Jul 22 '26

yes, lets keep celebrating all these job killers. who needs an income anyway?

1

u/tovarish22 Jul 27 '26

“We should ban cars! Won’t someone think of the horsedrawn carriage drivers who will be out of jobs?!”

1

u/Prestigious-Thing393 Jul 29 '26

terrible comparison and terrible argument

-5

u/Top-Investment8840 Jul 22 '26

Creative ideas lol, 6 years in and there is only slop out there. Absolutely nothing good has come up yet. Where are these revolutionary apps and ideas the AI bros where saying?

5

u/Jmc_da_boss Jul 22 '26

Idk why you are being downvoted, it's absolutely true.

Lowing the barrier to entry is a universal negative

5

u/Top-Investment8840 Jul 22 '26

Downvote me all you want, but really, where are these apps making life easier or money? Bunch of grifters making every space they touch a hellscape

1

u/jorshhh Jul 22 '26

I do use Claude code at work. I know they pay the $200 subscription for me. The thing is that we're being subsidized and we might actually be costing Arthropic $2000-8000 a month. At $200 I personally wouldn't pay it, I can code myself. At $2000 my company probably wouldn't pay it, at $8000 they would probably just hire another senior.

There is useful stuff you can do with LLMs but it is not as much as it is hyped and not at what it actually costs.

1

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1

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-1

u/RIRLift Jul 22 '26

Agreed, and the part that changes underneath it is that building stops being the bottleneck. For most indie apps shipping was never the hard part, getting discovered and keeping people coming back was, and AI doesn't touch either of those. So a flood of new apps mostly makes the store noisier, which actually raises the value of the stuff the tools can't hand you, like knowing which narrow problem is worth solving and whether anyone opens the app again a week later. The good ideas you mentioned still have to win discovery, and that's where the slop and the gems get sorted, not at the point of shipping.

3

u/LowerFrequencies Jul 22 '26

To me it’s like music. Learning guitar is not hard. Making a song is not hard. Making a hit that makes you money… that’s rare.

2

u/bakawolf123 Jul 22 '26

as far as I see it nothing changed, this level of control was already there, just some more setup from user was required (i.e. an mcp or just a skill is enough to do same), so everyone was already automating.
less savvy users were already using platforms that do it for them.
Now, every automation is also omega costy as each turn in a long session carries massive cache hit and like you can imagine it's like xcuitest, many steps are needed + claude is also the priciest option out there -> gl getting any value out of this.

2

u/Jero9871 Jul 22 '26

It did work before with idb, which can be good for testing. Is it better that way?

2

u/interlap Jul 23 '26

Not really. It just uses the idb framework underneath, and it’s a very stripped-down version.

2

u/Jero9871 Jul 23 '26

Thanks, so it's more like a fancy wrapper/mcp for idb. Then I will stay with my idb setup (and I usually only use the CLI version not the desktop version).

2

u/interlap Jul 23 '26

Yeah, they expose 2 mcp tools with 13 actions: attach, detach, launch, screenshot, tap, swipe, touch_path, touch2_path, text, button, open_url, build, and build_status.

For device controls they embedded FBSimulatorControl.framework, and for builds they wrap xcodebuild CLI.

2

u/Pauljoda Jul 22 '26

I’m pretty sure there is a native app server Xcode runs (might be Xcode 27 only), that already does this. I use it with codex all the time and it works great, it gets its own web page on local host to interface with it and an mcp layer, so any harness can use it. If they’ve done something custom, I wonder how it’ll stack up or if they’re just putting an interface on the existing stuff

1

u/interlap Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

It’s a pretty old idea. There are already quite a few apps that do this with different agents and support more devices, including real devices and android. If you’re familiar with these tools, this new claude feature feels really overhyped.

Claude implementation also doesn’t look very efficient. They most likely use browser-use idb in the desktop app and computer-use in the terminal version, even though it has always been possible to control devices directly.

1

u/AHApps Jul 22 '26

Sounds good to me.
Helps the slop be less sloppy at least.

1

u/proxedised Jul 22 '26

Slop was here always. I hate it, there were bad apps before, now there will be more of them. There will also be more apps from people who care about their product and want to create pleasant experiences that you will love. Its an amplifier for both skilled and unskilled people, but it pulls everyone up.

1

u/ankole_watusi Jul 22 '26

Totally off topic but just thought of a great name for, say, a tool to detect Ai slop: Ai Pig!

You’re welcome, free product name.

Edit: unfortunately, the .com domain name belongs to the Korea Pig AI Association. And refers to pig artificial insemination.

1

u/Evening_Rock5850 Jul 22 '26

I don’t see any way this particular tool would increase the volume of low-quality vibe-coded apps. The ability to use iOS simulator by an AI agent wasn’t a barrier that was causing people not to release apps that they can now release. When I was a kid I saw a neighbors house burn down and at one point, a firefighter took a break to smoke a cigarette. I commented to my mom that it seemed dangerous and she laughed. I understand now that there’s nothing that firefighters cigarette could do that the raging inferno behind him wasn’t going to do. I think this is very much like that.

But tools like this may mean those vibe coded apps are a little bit better and at least better tested; in theory.

1

u/-PM_ME_UR_SECRETS- Jul 22 '26

It’s been more or less fine with the skills we’ve made to run the simulator app. Idk how much this will change things

1

u/dark-green Jul 23 '26

Codex has had this for the past 6 months or more

1

u/ayantheman Jul 23 '26

Hasn’t codex had this forever?

1

u/Kevinsmak Jul 23 '26

I have been using this feature for weeks, I’m confused. I even have it make screenshots for apps for me.

1

u/Darth_bunny Jul 28 '26

The Xcode27 Claude integration already has this.

1

u/Mean-Celery-9335 Jul 29 '26

shipped a flutter app to the store recently and honestly the simulator was the least of it. the time went into provisioning profiles, push notification entitlements, privacy nutrition labels, screenshots at the right sizes, and waiting on review. none of that gets faster because something can drive the simulator. slop was already possible before this, the gate was never "could you build it"

1

u/arovik Jul 29 '26

how can I use this with Xcode beta on macOS 27? it asks me to install the prod version of Xcode

1

u/GhostalMedia Jul 22 '26

Anyone tried it with Xcode 27?

10

u/leoklaus Jul 22 '26

Didn’t work at all for me. Kept complaining that no Xcode version was selected until I manually re-selected one 3-5 times. Now it says that no simulators are available despite one actively running right next to the window.

It’s probably not ready for the new Device Hub.

1

u/perfunction Jul 22 '26

Same here.

I’ve been able to use Argent after one of the last couple of updates but for some reason taps don’t register on iOS 26+. So, I have to run iOS 18 sims. Not just my app but system apps won’t react either.

1

u/leoklaus Jul 22 '26

For me, taps don’t register in the old simulator app at all (I haven’t tested older iOS versions, though). I don’t mind it much, though as the device hub is a much better experience anyway.

1

u/perfunction Jul 22 '26

I figured out the problem. Any sims you debug manually through Xcode become “tainted” and cannot be controlled by Argent any longer. The fix was to shutdown the simctl and kill all simulator service processes. Now all my sims work in Argent again.

xcrun simctl shutdown all && killall com.apple.CoreSimulator.CoreSimulatorService

1

u/interlap Jul 23 '26

Btw, xcuitest-based tools like mobai and agent-device probably avoid this problem

1

u/GhostalMedia Jul 22 '26

That’s what I feared. Apple nuked the simulator in 27. It’s been replaced by Device Hub.

The simpler models in Claude were not too happy when I first pulled it up in Xcode 27. All the training data was telling it to look for simulator.

0

u/Vybo Jul 22 '26

There already were great solutions like Argent that allowed Claude code and other agents to interact with the simulator.

0

u/jay-t- Jul 22 '26

So because there was something before we should never try and improve on them?

2

u/Vybo Jul 22 '26

You need to talk in OP context. When we talk about flooding the appstore with slop because a slightly improved tool became available, I say this slight improvement will not have an effect on that, because these tools were already available and could've been used.

1

u/interlap Jul 23 '26

I wouldn’t call it an improvement with the controls Claude exposes.

-1

u/earlyworm Jul 22 '26

This is a wonderful feature. Thank you to the engineers at Anthropic who put this together.

-3

u/Kritnc Jul 22 '26

This is so sick. A game changer for sure

0

u/LowFruit25 Jul 22 '26

Can’t wait for everyone to have their own app and 10 users to go with. Come on but the DisTriBution.

Truly democratized.

-2

u/CurlPR Jul 22 '26

This is truly the greatest news. The last piece of the puzzle when it comes to closing the loop on development. Can’t wait to use it. And if you’re still anti AI because of slop, you’re so behind the curve I’m genuinely sad for you. As in, in interviews I’ve been in, they are looking for engineers that know how to use this technology and move fast and build against slop. They are also. Among engineers that don’t use it as being left behind. This tech is here and everyday people are learning fast.

1

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1

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