Local Testing of iOS Devices using PDA

  • Updated on Jul 6, 2023
  • Published on Mar 10, 2023
  • 2 minute(s) read
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This documentation will help you with the steps to connect to iOS devices from your local maching using the iOS Tunnel feature on the pCloudy Desktop Application (PDA). Incase you haven't downloaded or installed the PDA on your system or need help with the installation please click here.

This feature allows you to connect an iOS device virtually to your local machine and use it to debug from any IDE (Eclipse, XCode, etc).

  • Users should have already downloaded and installed the PDA application on their system
  • Users should be registered on the pCloudy platform.

Note: iOS tunnel can be used only on Mac machine. It is not supported on Windows/Linux OS.

  1. Download the PDA and move it to Applications.

  2. Open PDA from Applications

  3. While launching the installed PDA app If user gets a popup. Follow below mentioned steps-:

    1. Goto Settings(System Preference) and Navigate to Security&Privacy.
    2. In Security&Privacy under General tab user will find the pcloudy-desktop-assistant under Allow apps downloaded from.
    3. Select the button open anyway
    4. Select open on the next prompt.
    5. If user wish to use iOS tunnel feature,the PDA app needs to be launched from command line
      sudo /Applications/(application-name).app/Contents/MacOS/(application-name)

  4. Click on the iOS tunnel feature. All the devices present on the platform will appear under selected device.

    Important: User needs to download the prerequisite file by clicking on the download icon. These files are necessary to run the iOS tunnel

  5. Select the device, select the duration and click on start device tunnel

    Note: A user can only select one ios device at a time.

  6. Once file is downloaded, blue icon will turn to a green check

  7. Once the process is initialized and the devices are booked, a success notification will appear.

  8. Once the process is initialized, the devices will be booked and a Success notification will appear.

  9. Once the device is connected, it will appear in PDA under connected device label.

  10. To check if the device is booked please login to the pCloudy platform navigate to "My Active session"(for Public Device Users) and "My Bookings" (for Private Cloud Users) and connect the device.

  11. To verify the device connectivity on terminal, use below command

idevice_id -l
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Using this, user will get UDID of the connected device

  1. To get device info use the command below -
ideviceinfo | grep Prod
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User will be able to verify the device information such as Product name, version, etc.

  1. To view the device in XCode
    1. Open the XCode
    2. Go to Window Devices and Simulators
    3. Connected device will appear here