iOS Simulator: reliable offline / airplane-mode simulation for Maestro flows

[Bowlerr]

Use case

Problem

Maestro currently cannot reliably test offline behavior on iOS simulators.

• setAirplaneMode is a no-op on iOS
• iOS Simulator exposes no real airplane-mode toggle
• As a result, offline-dependent flows are not testable or deterministic on iOS

This blocks validation of common and critical UX paths such as:

• Offline login and error states
• Cached / offline-first content
• Retry and network recovery UI

Android supports this reliably; iOS does not, creating a cross-platform testing gap.

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Alternatives considered

• Network Link Conditioner

  • Not available or scriptable on all macOS / CI environments
  • Requires system profiles and manual setup
  • Not reliably toggleable per test run

• Simulator network disable / airplane mode

  • No supported API or deterministic CLI control

• App-level mocking / stubbing

  • Requires app code changes
  • Breaks black-box E2E testing guarantees

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Proposal

Add a reliable “offline mode” implementation for iOS simulators that makes setAirplaneMode deterministic.

From a user perspective:

• setAirplaneMode(true) reliably forces the simulator into an offline state
• setAirplaneMode(false) restores normal connectivity
• State is safely cleaned up even if a run fails

One possible implementation:

• Temporarily blackhole simulator traffic by setting macOS HTTP + HTTPS proxies to 127.0.0.1:<closed-port>
• Snapshot and restore previous proxy configuration on disable and driver exit
• Ensure Maestro’s XCTest control channel bypasses the proxy (NO_PROXY)

Anything else?

• This is intended as an “offline enough” mechanism for simulator E2E testing

• A minimal E2E validation flow could assert:

  ONLINE → OFFLINE → ONLINE
  

[linear]

MAE-354

[Fishbowler]

I don't think that proposal is gonna fly.

It might work fine in some CI environments, but blackholing all workstation traffic whilst developing tests is gonna be too disruptive to users.

[Bowlerr]

Valid, I'll have another think about this