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...]
In Xcode 6+ you can simply go to Menu > Window > Devices > Simulators and delete a simulator you don't need.
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
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
Original Answer
September 2017, Xcode 9
Runtimes
You will find them here:
/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes
https://i.stack.imgur.com/P7E9C.png
Devices
To delete devices go here:
~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices
https://i.stack.imgur.com/84SuT.png
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 🙂
xcrun simctl delete <device udid>
. You can also run xcrun simctl delete unavailable
to remove old devices for runtimes that are no longer supported.
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.
for XCode >= 6 see @praveen-matanam 's answer
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).
.simruntime
files
~/Library/Developer/...
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
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:
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/PhoneSimulator5.0.sdk ~/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.
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.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/61mIy.png
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.
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.
xcrun simctl delete unavailable
as suggested in other answers but that didn't delete the actual iOS versions. Thanks for the tip, there were a bunch of old/in-between ones in that folder! Btw, there's an app called "DevCleaner" in the app store that lists everything and can also delete specific ones (including old logs and archives).
https://i.stack.imgur.com/DQdqA.png
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
Update 2022
We can just use the Storage Management tool: ⌘ + Space bar and search storage.
Under Developer: you can find Xcode Cache and build files and also old version of iOS support files that you can delete.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/diMew.png
Tested on macOS Big Sur & Monterey
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
In XCode open Window - Devices, then select and remove the outdated simulators.
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
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:
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. 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.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/XlLMO.png
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.
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.
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.
~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices
.
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.
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 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
On Mac, check /Library/Developer/Xcode/iOS\ DeviceSupport
https://i.stack.imgur.com/lPASj.png
/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Profiles
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
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.
:)
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