baguette

Baguette is a Swift CLI that spins up iOS Simulator devices, streams their screens at 60fps, and injects taps, swipes, and multi-finger gestures without booting the Simulator GUI. Run it on your Mac and you get a headless device farm and an automation harness in one tool. Apache 2.0, requires macOS 15+ and Xcode 26.

The hard parts (host-HID input, accessibility tree extraction, frame streaming over MJPEG or H.264) are handled through SimulatorKit and the private accessibility framework, no dylib injection or DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES hacks. A web UI runs on localhost:8421 with per-simulator streams and a multi-device farm view. The CLI exposes everything for CI use.

Solo iOS developers: free, fast, and the gesture API is more useful than waiting for Simulator.app to boot. Small teams running iOS CI: a real device farm replacement that skips Linux-hosted runners or a third-party cloud. Mid-sized to large teams: useful for screenshot generation, regression sweeps, and integration testing across many simulator configurations. Cloud device farms still win on real hardware coverage.

The catch: it relies on private Apple frameworks and Xcode 26 internals. Apple changes those across major releases, so expect breakage when Xcode 27 ships.