Airplane Mode for the iOS Simulator

Offline that behaves like a real device

For simulator apps launched with request monitoring, Lagsmith’s Airplane Mode makes:

• requests fail with “The Internet connection appears to be offline”,
• NWPathMonitor report no network, so you can test your path-update handling in the simulator,
• SCNetworkReachability report no network, so Alamofire’s NetworkReachabilityManager and Reachability.swift see it too.

Everything else on your Mac, including Xcode and your other simulator apps, stays online.

Test the in-between states too

Real networks rarely go cleanly offline. Lagsmith can also:

• refuse a percentage of connections,
• time out every request,
• drop connections after a number of seconds,
• go offline and come back repeatedly, to test retries and reconnection,
• take a single endpoint offline while the rest works.

Automate offline tests

Set Airplane Mode from an XCTest UI test before launching the app, or let an AI agent do it through the MCP server. Automation docs · AI agents.

Frequently asked questions

Does the iOS Simulator have Airplane Mode?

Not a working one. The simulator shares the Mac’s network, so the usual workaround is turning off the Mac’s Wi-Fi. Lagsmith puts a single simulator app in Airplane Mode instead.

Will NWPathMonitor report no network?

Yes, for simulator apps launched with request monitoring. NWPathMonitor and SCNetworkReachability (used by Alamofire and Reachability.swift) report no network, like on a real device.

What error do requests fail with?

URLSession requests fail with “The Internet connection appears to be offline”, the same error a real device gives in Airplane Mode.

Can I simulate a flaky connection instead of fully offline?

Yes. Lagsmith can refuse a percentage of connections, time out requests, drop connections after N seconds, or go offline and back repeatedly.