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: ''Cycada'' (2014), formally known as Cider and Chameleon before that is an unreleased research project made by a few folks at Columbia that ran iOS 5.1.1 and experimentally iOS 6 apps at a high, but not perfect quality and compatibility (see paper for list). It is based on pirated iOS libraries. It is seriously not recommended to initiate contact with the developers of the project, as they never planned on releasing it and want people to use their paper to reproduce it with "significant effort". All attempts to release it by contacting them have resulted in them saying they are not interested. You may try to recreate Cycada on your own, provided that you know the internals of Android, iOS, XNU, and Linux. Out of 69 tested apps, 19 apps fully work, 10 work with minor bugs that do not affect functionality, 15 have major errors that affect functionality, and 27 crash. Only [https://github.com/darlinghq/darling/issues/1168#issuecomment-1115143186 one recreation] is known to exist, which is also unreleased, and it was made by the creator of DarlingHQ along with two other unknown individuals. It took about a year to develop, and one component of it was released. The one exception where some original code was published was [https://github.com/darlinghq/darling-newlkm here], to be reused in Darling later on. Jeremy Andrus was accused of being a sellout for leaving the project to work as a kernel programmer (Now a Cloud Computing Efficiency worker) for Apple. The project booted many 32-bit iOS apps successfully, albeit slowly. The last update to this project was in [https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3135974.3135981 '''2017''']. (NOTE: If you search "Cider APK", you will get iPhone 12 launcher adware) To see the paper, its specifications, its compatible apps, and possibly recreate it, see [http://jeremya.com/files/pub/2015/02/andrus-thesis.pdf here]
;TruEmu
:QEMU-t8030, also known as TruEmu, is an iPhone 11 emulated in QEMU, however, the current version with a published source cannot boot. TruEmu is a software that offers support for iOS 14 up to the latest iOS 16 and is built to work on iPhone 6S SecureROM hardware. It also provides out-of-box kernel debugging support and USB support (with Firmware Restore) and utilizes Apple's custom CPU features such as SPRR/GXF and custom PAC. Additionally, TruEmu is open-source software. TruEmu is made to counteract the paid Corellium’s monopoly in iOS emulation for security reasearch. The creator’s mastodon and X (formally Twitter) shows work on full SEP emulation and it booting to SpringBoard and operating the Calculator and Settings apps, but it is currently unreleased, with only minor graphical glitches. The day videos of it’s operation were posted on social medias, a user made an issue about it and archived the repo with no comment, only with a comment before it was emulated saying that he was working on multitouch. The reason it was unreleased remains uncertain. He may be developing a very capable iOS emulator, or he may have been stopped by an Apple employee or has been paranoid about possible Copyright issues and decided to not release it nor make a comment.
;Unnamed iOS Emulator
This is a Low-Level Emulator made by user “K-8-L-Y-N” discussed on the Darling Discord Server, which can run Springboard and the Calculator. It does not support touch at all, making it almost useless. It only emulates the kernel and the user provides a filesystem DMG. They’ve gotten iOS 1.0 springboard to boot, which they said was not too difficult and said they were also using iOS 1.0 dyld directly. They said it was a Low-Level-Emulation project as they had to emulate the CPU. They also said the kernel emulation is shorty and it only works. They said they’ll never release it in the state that is in, and refuses to even work on it due to touchHLE’s existence. It does load the original frameworks but doesn’t emulate UIKit.
;Darling
*Blog sites suggest “iOSEmus” as an iOS emulator for Android devices. In reality, it is an alternate App Store for iOS to install jailbreak tools including console emulators and other tools on iOS 11.
Your best bet, until touchHLE supports your 32-bit app, ARM macOS is able to be virtualized without an ARM Mac (for 64-bit), or a new emulation effort is ever started, is to hope that whatever iOS app you're interested in gets an Android port. This is very rare, especially for Japanese ones, as Android is perceived to be more open to piracy. That appears to be gradually changing lately and isn't of as much concern for non-gaming apps. However, in the U.S., the trend goes to iOS exclusively, including the Faves, Bloom, and the official ChatGPT apps getting iOS versions first, and a trend of users in Anglo-America discriminating against Android users, forcing them to switch to iOS also may contribute to the need for one.
{{Apple}}
