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verikun

iOS setup

vk --ios reaches feature parity with Android — ui / find, tap, text / type, swipe, key, assert, wait, screenshot, launch / stop, plus vk batch, vk ai, and the JUnit + HTML reports — on both simulators and physical devices.

Parity is not total, and it differs between a simulator and a physical device. Platform support is the command-by-command matrix; this page is how to get the toolchain working.

Install idb

Section titled “Install idb”

Everything interactive is powered by idb (Facebook’s iOS Development Bridge), shelled one-shot like adb:

Terminal window
brew tap facebook/fb && brew install idb-companion   # the companion daemon
pip install fb-idb                                    # the idb CLI (needs Python 3.6+)

Then boot a simulator and check the toolchain:

Terminal window
xcrun simctl boot "iPhone 17 Pro"    # or start Simulator.app
vk doctor --ios

vk --ios ui, vk --ios tap, and the rest then work.

Which tool does what

Section titled “Which tool does what”

verikun picks between simctl and idb per operation, based on whether the resolved UDID is a simulator:

Operation Simulator Physical device
Accessibility hierarchy idb ui describe-all idb ui describe-all
Tap / type / swipe / key idb ui … idb ui …
Screen size idb describe idb describe
Screenshot xcrun simctl idb
Launch / stop xcrun simctl idb
Device logs xcrun simctl (log show) unsupported
device set dark / font-scale xcrun simctl ui unsupported

--device booted is resolved to the concrete UDID of the booted simulator, since idb cannot address the booted alias itself.

Documented limitations

Section titled “Documented limitations”

Where the platform has no clean equivalent, verikun refuses with a named reason rather than half-implementing it. Platform support is the full matrix; two entries there decide which target you should pick:

  • A physical iOS device supports no device settings at all — dark and font-scale, the two keys that work on a simulator, refuse on a device.
  • log capture is simulator-only. For a physical device use Console.app or idb log directly, and expect an archived run from one to carry no device log.

Writing selectors that work on iOS

Section titled “Writing selectors that work on iOS”

The advice does not change on iOS — @id first, text: second, desc: never; the reasoning is in Selectors.

What is iOS-specific is where a label ends up. An accessibility label arrives as desc on Android but as text on iOS, so a desc: selector written against Android silently stops matching when you point the same test at a simulator. desc: on iOS reaches only the accessibility hint, which almost nothing sets.

--selected and --focused exit 3 on iOS rather than matching nothing; --enabled and --checked work on both — see Platform support.

Where to go next

Section titled “Where to go next”