Is it possible to run iOS simulator on a Mac without Xcode installed?

Question

There are a few questions relating to this topic but nothing quite the same when it comes down to the details:

We would like to use the iOS Simulator without installing the rest of XCode on a macbook. It is an in-house laptop, and will be used by employees, but not engineers.

We already know how to run applications on the simulator without the source code and compiling required, but it would be nice to be able to install a 100MB app and application support that can run our in-house distribution app as opposed to a 2.4GB XCode installation. Any ideas? Thanks.

Solution 1

The Simulator app requires several other large directories from the Xcode distribution in order to work at all. The only official way to install all of those properly is to install the entire SDK from the dmg. Then you can experiment with deleting the hopefully "unneeded" directories. Be prepared to start over if you delete something that the Simulator requires.

Solution 2

You would have to extract the Simulator pkg from the Xcode DMG. The only thing is that the Simulator depends on having an SDK installed, that way it knows which iOS to run the app in.