Give your simulator superpowers

RocketSim: An Essential Developer Tool
as recommended by Apple

Issue 54
Mar 16, 2021

Enhancing the iOS Simulator for improved productivity and pixel-perfect design implementations.

It's hard to believe it's only been 10 months since the first release of RocketSim. This week's blog post covers the fourth iteration and finally makes RocketSim an app that is more than just a layer on top of simctl.

Not long ago, I found myself doubting whether I should continue development as the latest (beta) version of Xcode comes with built-in recording functionality: it used to be RocketSim's main feature.

I decided to take it as a new motivator to step up my game and find a way to improve RocketSim, even more. I'm developing apps 5 days a week, and I'm always looking to improve my productivity. I even wrote a bunch of articles to improve your workflow. The very first version of RocketSim was an internal tool to make it easier to test deeplinks in the Collect by WeTransfer app.

Josh Holtz shares a story around an internal app in this week's SwiftLee Weekly, and Jordan Morgan earlier shared reasons why it's important to build stuff. Some tools will be used internally only while others will result in a product, but they all have one thing in common: they bring you experience. Keep on building!

Enjoy this week's SwiftLee Weekly.

THIS WEEK'S BLOG POST
Comparing designs and record the iOS Simulator with touches. These are just two of the major features that come with this latest version. In this week's blog post, I'm explaining those features in a bit more detail. RocketSim 4.0 is now available for free in the macOS App Store.

TWEET OF THE WEEK
No Swift or code, but still very related to most of us: Zoom calls. I always find myself being frustrated once Zoom moves into fullscreen when somebody shares a screen. This was a very welcome tip from Peter Steinberger.

SPONSORED
RocketSim makes it really easy to record the iOS simulator with touches. Compare designs and create pixel-perfect implementations. Download now from the Mac App Store for free.

CURATED FROM THE COMMUNITY

CODE
Not many know, but I graduated on hacking iPhones in the days of iOS 4 and 5. With that in mind, you wouldn’t be surprised I liked this article by Rob Kerr covering tools to read data from your iPhone.
Just a random article covering random functionality! In other words, Filip Němeček shows us how you can pick random elements, colors, or other values.
I’ve been covering articles by Alex Grebenyuk quite a lot lately, and it’s for a reason: he often writes about something I didn’t see being covered before. This time again: turning directories into files. The Collect app I’m working on in my day-to-day job at WeTransfer has to deal a lot with files, and we’ve been running into directory files quite a bit. An interesting read.

VIDEO
Vincent Pradeilles is going to cover something I always like doing: exploring the Swift Standard Library implementation! It’s always nice to see how something works under the hood. Vincent will show us live how this works.

PRODUCT
Jordan Morgan really triggered me here! Not only because I love automating things, but also because I really think there’s value in this product. Apple’s documentation is full of interesting information which might not always be easily findable. Hopefully, The Daily iOS will help us here!
Warning: Josh “Now A Dad” Holtz can make you very happy here but disappoint you at the same time. He developed a tool to monitor GitHub repositories as he has quite a few repositories to keep an eye on with Fastlane. I encourage you to let him know you find it useful as that will likely be enough for him to make it open-source.

PODCAST
I enjoyed listening to John Sundell having a discussion and interview with Donny about Combine, Core Data, and working at Disney+. If you have some time to listen to a podcast this week, I definitely recommend this one.