simtool

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 10.15 or later
• Xcode Command Line Tools
• Go 1.24.4 or later (for building from source)

🚀 Installation

Homebrew (Recommended)

brew tap azizuysal/tap
brew install simtool

Go Install

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

Download Binary

Download from Releases page.

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/azizuysal/simtool.git
cd simtool
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.

Every release ships with checksums.txt.sig and checksums.txt.pem sidecars alongside the archives. Signing the checksums file protects every artifact transitively via SHA-256.

To verify a downloaded release:

# One-time: brew install cosign

# From the release page, download: the archive, checksums.txt, checksums.txt.sig, checksums.txt.pem
cosign verify-blob \
  --certificate checksums.txt.pem \
  --signature checksums.txt.sig \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/azizuysal/simtool/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
  checksums.txt

# If verification succeeds, confirm the archive matches:
shasum -a 256 -c 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 our Contributing Guide for details on our code of conduct and development process.

Development Setup

git clone https://github.com/azizuysal/simtool.git
cd simtool
go mod download
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

Made with ❤️ by Aziz Uysal