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{{No unofficial emulators|OS}}
! colspan="6"|PC / x86|-|macOS Big Surand up
==See also==
* [[Emulators on iOS]]
→Emulators
}}
:''This page is about software that emulates IOS on other hardware, like desktops.''{{for|emulators that run on IOS|Emulators on iOS}}
'''iOS''' devices started the smartphone craze which would go on to replace conventional mobile phones in both Japan (which had its own subset of cell phones) and the rest of the world, with more advanced touch-controlled devices.
Unlike their direct competitor, [[Android emulators|Android-based smartphones]], they currently have '''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. However some emulators 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. BlackThunder (Chinese:黑雷模拟器),[https://www.heilei.com/ website] is a closed source, commercial iOS simulator that can run a few commercial iOS apps. Unlike previous emulation trails, BlackThunder firstly 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.
==Emulators==
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
! scope="col"|Name
! scope="col"|Platform(s)
! scope="col"|Latest Versionversion
! scope="col"|<abbr title="Free/Libre and Open-Source Software">FLOSS</abbr>
! scope="col"|Active
! scope="col"|[[Recommended Emulatorsemulators|Recommended]]
|-
|align=left|{{Icon|macOS}}
|?
|{{✓}}
|-
|ipasim
|aligh=left|{{Icon|Windows}}
|[https://github.com/ipasimulator/ipasim PatchV1.0.1]
|{{✓}}
|{{✗}}
|{{~}}
|-
|Corellium (Virtualization)
|Web
|[https://www.corellium.com/ Website]
|{{✗}}
|{{✓}}
|{{✓}}
|}
;macOS Big Sur
The 17th major operating system of the macOS line. It has support for iOS and iPadOS applications for Apple M1 based Macs, however some apps are not installed due to Apple DRM.
==History of Failed failed iOS Emulation Attemptsemulation attempts==
Many of the currently available '''"simulators"''' only try recreating popular iOS apps (like browsers) in a PC application with no real emulation involved. Some notable [[Emulator scams|scams]] in such fashion are called '''iPadian''' or variations on the name, and are often '''malware'''.
* A project to emulate various smartphones (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Apple TV 2G) called '''iEmu''', started in 2011 but got mysteriously abandoned two years later before anything usable surfaced. All pages related to the project were removed. It's speculated Apple had a hand in this.
* Nowadays, a malicious APK file going by the '''iEmu''' moniker is also being circulated on blogs run by script kiddies claiming to offer a way to run iOS apps on Android. More often than not they're uploaded with the intention of generating revenue from impressionable users (through pay-per-click URL shorteners) who fall easily for those types of scams.
* There has been recently a project to provide a runtime for iOS apps to run on '''Android''' called [http://systems.cs.columbia.edu/projects/cycada/ '''Cycada'''] (formerly known as '''Cider'''), but not much progress has been made as of recently, and the original author was accused by some of being a sellout for leaving the project to work as a kernel programmer for Apple. (NOTE: If you will try searching "Cider apk" you will get an iphone 12 launcher adware, even on uptodown or malavida)
* There was also a project based on [[QEMU]] that usually went around by the name QEMU-s5l89xx (based on the part number of the original iPhone), or iVM. The last known commits to this project were in 2013, and it is unclear if this project will ever come to fruition.
iOS apps are distributed in the IPA format. Like its Android counterpart, APK files, they can be opened as a regular zip file most of the time and their contents dissected this way.
{{Apple}}
