iOS Simulator IPA not working

[MurrayHamilton]

I'm on an M1 Mac running macOS Tahoe 26.4.1 and Xcode 26.4.

I'm using the latest macOS AIR SDK 51.3.2.1.

I usually package IPAs for the iOS simulator using this command:

adt -package -target ipa-test-interpreter-simulator -storetype pkcs12 -keystore dummy.p12 -storepass password output-path/test-simulator.ipa path-to-xml/application.xml -C path-to/bin . -C path-to/icons . -platformsdk /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulatorXX.X.sdk

Then I install the IPA using this command:

export AIR_IOS_SIMULATOR_DEVICE="${simulatorDevices[$deviceOption]}"
adt -installApp -platform ios -platformsdk /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneSimulatorXX.X.sdk -device ios-simulator -package output-path/test-simulator.ipa)

These commands have worked fine in the past (albeit on much on older versions of AIR and macOS/Xcode), but now when I come to install the IPA I get this error:

An error was encountered processing the command (domain=IXUserPresentableErrorDomain, code=4):
App installation failed: “APP NAME” Needs to Be Updated
This app needs to be updated by the developer to work on this version of iOS.
Failed to find matching arch for input file: /Users/murray/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/A57A45AB-61A9-4899-9094-579AF0500C25/data/Library/Caches/com.apple.mobile.installd.staging/temp.iRYHVm/extracted/APP NAME.app/APP NAME
Underlying error (domain=IXUserPresentableErrorDomain, code=4):
“APP NAME” Needs to Be Updated
This app needs to be updated by the developer to work on this version of iOS.

The simulator I'm targeting is an iPhone 17 Pro Max, but had the same issue when targeting other devices.

Any ideas on what to do? If you need any more info please let me know.

[marchbold]

Hi, I can confirm I see the same message with AIR SDK 51.3.2.1 and 51.2.2 attempting to run on an iOS 26 simulator.

Seems the simulator ipa's are produced with only the x86_64 and iOS 26 + simulators are now enforcing arm64 as a requirement. This will need an update for the AIR SDK to support arm64 output from the simulator build.

For the moment you should be able to use a simulator running iOS 18 as this was less strict on the arm64 and supported x86_64 only ipa's.

[marchbold]

I've created a bug #4210 to track this issue

[MurrayHamilton]

Thanks for checking it on your end, and for the suggesting to use an iOS 18 simulator (didn't even think to try that!) - it's working on a 16 Pro Max simulator so I can get on with taking my screenshots!

And thank you for creating the issue - probably should have done that to begin with but I'm never sure on GitHub etiquette!

Just as a slight aside - if the simulator build was arm64, would it perform better? My apps are quite laggy when using them in the simulator, but the built-in ones (like the calendar) are just as smooth an on a real device. If my apps were smoother I could maybe use the simulator to record previews for the App Store, which would be very useful.

[ajwfrost]

I suspect if you're running on a device with Apple Silicon, then it would be much better to have both the simulator and the software that runs on it also using arm64 based binaries, but it depends perhaps on how it's implemented! So I would hope so, but can't say for sure..

[marchbold]

:) Don't worry about github etiquette, I actually think a discussion is a better way to start until it is actually identified as an issue.