Show HN: We added iOS real device support to Maestro

3 points

6 months ago

iOS real device support has been Maestro's most requested feature since January 2023. Almost 3 years of GitHub issues and comments asking for the same thing.

We needed it for our work, so we built it and submitted PR #2856. But the Maestro team said official support won't land until next year — no committed timeline.

We didn't want teams to wait, so we packaged a standalone tool that works today.

How it works: - maestro-ios-device builds and deploys the XCTest runner to your physical iPhone - Port forwarding bridges localhost:6001 → device:22087 - Your existing Maestro YAML runs unchanged

Bonus: We also unlocked parallel execution on multiple real devices. Maestro had a hardcoded port limitation — now you can run on device 1 at :6001 and device 2 at :6002 simultaneously.

Limitations (Apple restrictions): - clearState works via app reinstall (not simctl) - setLocation requires additional setup - addMedia not supported

Install: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/devicelab-dev/maestro-ios-... | bash

Repo: https://github.com/devicelab-dev/maestro-ios-device PR: https://github.com/mobile-dev-inc/Maestro/pull/2856

Tested on iOS 18.x and 26.x with Maestro 2.0.9/2.0.10.

This is unofficial — when Maestro ships native support, use that instead. Happy to answer questions about the implementation.

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