baguette
Headless iOS Simulator manager/farm + host-side input injection for iOS 26 — taps, swipes, multi-finger gestures, and 60 fps streaming
The Lens
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.
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Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully free### Free Tier Whole tool. Apache 2.0, no paid version.
### Self-Hosted Install via Homebrew: `brew install tddworks/tap/baguette`. Run on any Mac with macOS 15+ and Xcode 26. CLI for scripts, web UI for interactive use. CI runs need a Mac runner, since iOS Simulator is Mac-only.
### Comparison: Cloud device farms BrowserStack and Sauce Labs charge $30-150/mo per parallel simulator and offer real device coverage that Baguette does not. Baguette is the right answer for simulator-based testing on hardware you already own. Real device coverage still belongs to the cloud farms.
### When the math works Teams running CI on Mac runners (GitHub Actions macOS runners, dedicated Mac mini fleets, or self-hosted) save subscription costs by handling simulator automation locally. Real device testing is a separate budget line.
Free and open source. Apache 2.0. Mac with Xcode required.
Similar Tools
License: Apache License 2.0
Use freely. Patent grant included.
Commercial use: ✓ Yes
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