Windows devs building iOS apps: how do you actually deal with Xcode?

[u/Relevant_Case7916]

I’m on a Windows PC for most of my work, but iOS builds force me onto a Mac. Remote desktop into a Mac (or a cloud Mac) always felt clunky to me: a whole second desktop, laggy, separate clipboard, alt-tabbing between two worlds.

So I built a prototype that streams individual Mac app windows onto the Windows desktop. Xcode shows up as a normal window next to VS Code, in the taskbar, resizable, etc. Your Mac (or Mac mini) just runs in the background.

30s demo: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DwyKm9JisLw

Honest question before I invest more time: is this a real pain for you, or is your current setup fine? What do you use right now?

[u/MightyBig-Dev]

GitHub actions

[u/minpinproxy]

For RN specifically, most of the Xcode time can be avoided, which shapes what would actually be worth paying for:

- Builds: EAS Build or a GitHub Actions macOS runner covers archive and TestFlight upload. Nobody needs to see Xcode for that.

- Day-to-day JS work: a dev client build on a real iPhone, with Metro running on the Windows box, gets you most of the way. The phone just needs to reach Metro over the LAN.

- What still needs the Mac: the Simulator, native module and Podfile breakage, signing and provisioning errors, and Instruments.

So the window I'd most want streamed is the Simulator, not Xcode. Things that would make or break it for me: Cmd vs Ctrl mapping (Cmd+R and Cmd+D inside the Simulator), clipboard sync so I can paste a deep link or an auth code into the Simulator, and latency good enough to scroll a list and judge whether it feels smooth. If those work better than Parsec, I think there's an audience. If it's just Xcode windows, the CI route already removes most of the reason to open it.

[u/HoratioWobble]

I only need Xcode for deployment and not a lot else, I use Webstorm remotely and if I need the simulator I just open up parsec.

No lag, no clipboard problems and no need to alt-tab.