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Does an iOS virtual machine for Windows exist? If it doesn't are there any reason why it couldn't?

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  • Is the iOS simulator packaged with Xcode not good enough for your needs?
    – Andrew Larsson
    Mar 11, 2016 at 17:48
  • I don't have a mac
    – Mauro F.
    Mar 11, 2016 at 18:41
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    Why do you need a VM? Since computers aren't powerful enough to emulate an iOS device, if you don't have a proper developer environment, you won't be able to do a lot. What you can do is virtualize OS X and then use the simulator packaged with OS X.
    – JMY1000
    Mar 11, 2016 at 19:07
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    You can't have a VM for IOS on Windows or OSX as IOS runs on ARM CPUs and Windows and OSX on Intel x86
    – mmmmmm
    Mar 11, 2016 at 20:06
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    @Mark, I think you are confusing Virtual Machines and Virtualization with Emulators and Emulation. An Emulator is just a type of VM, one that uses Emulation rather than Virtualization. Virtualization is used in a VM where the host architecture is replicated to the guest.
    – SeeJayBee
    Feb 22, 2019 at 17:57

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Simple answer: No.

Apple does not allow iOS to run anywhere else but iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) and the Xcode simulator. You could simulate OS X on your Windows VM application and then use Xcode to simulate an iOS device, but this would be really taxing on your computer and really not worth the effort, but you cannot simulate iOS directly on Windows because of chipsets and Apple preventing it.

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    Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this is why I hate Apple. On a more sedate note - has anything changed over the past year?
    – user174099
    Apr 6, 2017 at 13:32
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    If you hate Apple, then you shouldn't try to write iOS software.
    – gnasher729
    Oct 24, 2017 at 23:13
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    It's a very naive decision by Apple not to provide a way for developers to test their apps against Apple products, which has already cost Apple a fair share of the market. That's why people love Android. Simple, free and with a lot of support.
    – Mladen B.
    Feb 14, 2018 at 18:27
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    What about some of us that just want to debug css for a site that our client tells us that "it does not show properly in my iphone as it does in android or desktops" ?
    – Eric
    Mar 14, 2018 at 23:31
  • @Eric my answer was to buy an old device for ~65€, in terms of company cost is less than the day of work an employee would take while configuring XCode, the MacOS virtual machine and all the likely unexpected problems
    – Carlos Roldán
    Feb 14 at 9:59

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