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Real camera flows · No device

A real camera for the iOS Simulator.

Feed a still image, a video file, your Mac’s webcam, or a QR code straight into apps running in the Simulator — where Apple gives you nothing. A macOS menu-bar app and a faux CLI. Nothing left behind.

Download FauxCam.appGet the CLI

macOS 26 · Xcode 26 · MIT licensed

RECWYSIWYG
The problem

The iOS Simulator has no camera.

Any app that opens AVCaptureSession gets nothing. Scanning a QR code, capturing a photo, showing a live preview — none of it can be exercised without plugging in a physical device. FauxCam fills that gap.

Pick a source

Three sources. One fake camera.

Media

A still image or a video file, looped — drop in whatever your flow needs to see.

Camera

Your Mac's webcam or Continuity Camera, mirrored live into the simulated app.

QR

Encode any text or URL into a scannable QR code, rendered crisp for the scanner.

Viewfinder · WYSIWYG

Frame exactly what the simulator sees.

The panel mirrors the exact frame each booted simulator receives. Compose it right on the viewfinder, switch the mirrored device from a glass picker, and flip portrait ⇄ landscape — the source re-renders to fit.

  • Drag to pan
  • Scroll or pinch to zoom
  • Twist to rotate — snaps to right angles
FauxCam viewfinder mirroring a QR code into an iPad simulator scanning it
● Mirror · iPadLocked
Under the hood

Inject, swizzle, stream.

01

Inject

libFaux.dylib loads into the simulated process at launch via DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES — booted simulators are injected automatically, including apps you run from Xcode.

02

Swizzle

The dylib swizzles AVFoundation to vend a fake front/back capture device. Every swizzle falls through to the original on failure, so the host app never crashes.

03

Stream

The host streams BGRA frames over an AF_UNIX socket. Stop, and the app is terminated and the dylib unloaded — nothing is installed in the app or device.

All “Apple-fighting” risk is isolated in the swizzles — the wire protocol has a single source of truth in a shared C header compiled by both host and guest.

Two independent downloads

Install in a minute.

The FauxCam menu-bar app showing its viewfinder panel mirroring a simulator
● Menu bar
  1. 1Download FauxCam.dmg from the latest release — Developer-ID-signed and notarized.
  2. 2Open the DMG and drag FauxCam.app to /Applications.
  3. 3Launch it. It lives in the menu bar (no Dock icon) — click the icon for the viewfinder.
Download FauxCam.dmg

Ready when you are

Stop borrowing a real device.

Point a camera at your simulator and test the flows you’ve been skipping.

Download FauxCamView on GitHub