Changes

Unlike their its direct competitor, [[Android emulators|Android-based smartphones]], they currently have there are practically no usable emulators, as the official iOS SDK (macOS-only) only allows for running your own projects, i.e., they run code generated for an x86 target rather than ARM code as used by iOS. Some simulators (e.g., [[BlackThunder]]) make use of the simulator in the iOS SDK to run a few chosen iOS apps that are recompiled for x86. Unlike previous emulation trails, BlackThunder first loads a highly trimmed Hackintosh image via VirtualBox, which loads Xcode and an iOS simulator into it, then runs iOS apps that are decompiled and recompiled for the x86 architecture. More recently, touchHLE managed to get at least one older iPhone OS app running by recreating some of iOS’s standard libraries and emulating just the iPhone’s CPU.

|[https://github.com/hikari-no-yume/touchHLE /releases/tag/v0.1.0 v0.1.0]

|[https://www.corellium.com/ Corellium (Virtualization)]

|[https://www.corellium.com/ Website]

|[https://github.com/devos50/qemu/tree/ipod_touch_1g QEMU (fork)]|align=left|{{Icon|macOS|Linux|macOS}}|[https://github.com/devos50/qemu/tree/ipod_touch_1g git]

|[https://github.com/ipasimulator/ipasimipasim]

|PatchV1.0.1|{{✓}}|{{✗}}|{{✗}}|-|[https://github.com/ipasimulatorzhkl0228/ipasim PatchV1unidbg unidbg]|align=left|{{Icon|Windows|macOS|Linux}}|0.09.1]7

:A promising new endeavour that aims to run older iOS apps by recreating reimplementing standard iOS libraries instead of emulating all of an iDevice’s internal components. Because of this very high-level approach, no dump of the operating system is required. Its initial target is iPhone OS 2.x apps, with plans to support other 32-bit iOS versions being planned, mainly 3.x and 4.x, as well as the iPad. Development started in December 2022, and its first release, initial 0.1.0, release came out in February 2023. Currently, it The only officially supported application is only known to support one app, namely [https://archive.org/download/iOSObscura/iPhoneOS%202/com.ooi.supermonkeyball/ SEGA and Other Ocean’s ''Super Monkey Ball''] – the dev’s inspiration for the project – but development which is still ongoingfully playable and runs at full speed, even on mid-range laptops. To run an application, you must unzip the IPA app dump, place the *.app folder inside must be extracted from an IPA file to touchHLE’s main directory, and then run it ran from the command line, however. However, development versions have made it so an allow IPA file can files to be run directly. The accelerometer A game controller is controlled through a joystick’s left analog stick. It is still a very barebones experience, but required to control the one game it supports is fully playable and runs full speed even on mid-range laptops, and it’s still very early in developmentaccelerometer.

Your best bet, until a new emulation effort is ever started, is to hope that whatever iOS app you're interested in gets an Android port. Which This is often sadly not the case (until very recently) for the vast majority of the older game appsrare, especially for Japanese ones - , as Android is often perceived to be the more open to piracy-friendly platform. That appears to be gradually changing lately and isn't of as much concern for non-gaming apps, but the older apps are unlikely to get ported for the most part.

iOS apps are distributed in the IPA format. Like its Android counterpart, 's APK files, they are standard ZIP files, so their contents can be opened with 7-Zip browsed and extracted most of the time and can have their contents dissected this way.