Boot, stop, and manage iOS Simulators and Android Emulators — from your macOS menu bar.
BootBar is a native SwiftUI menu bar app that puts your entire mobile device toolchain one click away. One panel for both Apple and Google toolchains — list, start, stop, cold-boot, and erase/wipe iOS Simulators and Android Emulators without touching Xcode, Android Studio, or a terminal.
No Electron, no daemons, no telemetry. A single lightweight panel driving simctl, emulator, and adb underneath.
- 🍎 iOS Simulators — list available devices with runtime version, boot (opens Simulator.app), shutdown, cold boot, erase content and settings
- 🤖 Android Emulators — list AVDs with API level, start, stop, cold boot (
-no-snapshot-load), wipe data (-wipe-data) - 🟢 Live state tracking — running / booting / stopped indicators refresh automatically while the panel is open
- 🧹 Tidy by design — quits Simulator.app automatically when the last simulator stops, so no orphan dock icons
- 🔍 Android SDK auto-detection — finds your SDK via
$ANDROID_HOME,$ANDROID_SDK_ROOT, or the default install path, with a manual override in Settings - 🪶 Native and lightweight — pure SwiftUI
MenuBarExtra, zero third-party dependencies, no dock icon
| Light | Dark |
|---|---|
 |
 |
git clone https://github.com/dipendra-sharma/BootBar.git
cd BootBar
xcodebuild -project BootBar.xcodeproj -scheme BootBar -derivedDataPath build build
open "build/Build/Products/Debug/BootBar.app"Or open BootBar.xcodeproj in Xcode and press Run.
Pre-built releases and a Homebrew cask are planned — watch the Releases page.
- macOS 14 or later
- Xcode (for
xcrun simctl— iOS section) - Android SDK with
emulatorandplatform-tools(Android section)
Important
Each platform section degrades independently. No Xcode? The iOS section shows a hint while Android keeps working — and vice versa. Neither toolchain is required for the app to launch.
- Click the phone icon in the menu bar
- Press ▶ to boot a device, ■ to stop it
- The ⋯ menu holds Cold Boot and Erase / Wipe Data
- The panel auto-refreshes every 5 seconds while open
- Set a custom Android SDK path via Settings in the footer
| Action | iOS | Android |
|---|---|---|
| Start | simctl boot + opens Simulator.app |
emulator -avd |
| Stop | simctl shutdown |
adb emu kill |
| Cold Boot | shutdown → boot | restart with -no-snapshot-load |
| Erase / Wipe | simctl erase |
restart with -wipe-data |
All device logic lives in BootBarCore, a local Swift package with full unit test coverage (parsers and services tested against real CLI output fixtures). The app target contains only SwiftUI views.
cd BootBarCore
swift testNo iOS simulators listed? Make sure Xcode is installed and xcrun simctl list devices works in a terminal.
No Android emulators listed? BootBar looks for the SDK at $ANDROID_HOME, $ANDROID_SDK_ROOT, then ~/Library/Android/sdk. Set the path manually in Settings if yours lives elsewhere.
A device stays "Booting…" for a while? Android emulators take 30-60 s to register with adb after launch. The dot turns green as soon as the device reports in.
Does it phone home? No. BootBar makes zero network requests.
Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. Please use the issue templates for bugs and feature requests.
MiniSim and Control Room explored this space first and remain excellent tools.
MIT © Dipendra Sharma