Expo Ios Simulator

Expo on the iOS Simulator (layer on top of ios-simulator)

Everything here is Expo / React-Native runtime behavior, not the simulator itself (that is ios-simulator, which boots devices, captures screenshots, and grants permissions). This skill gets an Expo app running on a booted simulator and clears the Expo-specific overlays that stall automation. For "make the app driveable" see mobile-accessibility.

Before anything

A booted simulator and AXe installed; that is ios-simulator prerequisites.md. This skill discovers everything app-specific (bundle id, scheme) from the app config; it never hardcodes a project's nouns.

The loop

1. Pick an execution mode (references/execution-modes.md): Expo Go, a development

build (dev client), Storybook-mobile, or web-on-mobile. The choice is forced by whether the app has custom native code.

1. Get the app on the device. Pure-JS app: Expo Go installs and launches it for you

(references/expo-go.md). Anything with native modules or a config plugin: build and install a dev client (references/development-builds.md), then serve Metro and connect by deep link.

1. Clear the recurring prompts (references/known-prompts.md): the "Open in app?"

deep-link dialog, the push-token alert that re-fires and stacks on each reload, and the dev menu; avoid the element-inspector trap. Clear each by accessibility, never coordinates.

1. Drive it. The driving primitive is ios-simulator references/driving.md

(axe tap --id / --label); what makes the app addressable is mobile-accessibility.

Rules

• Discover bundle id and scheme from the app config; never hardcode them.
• Never drive a bundling app. Two readiness gates sit between "launched" and "driveable":

Metro serving (curl /status) and the first bundle finishing (the tree grows labels); both recipes are in references/development-builds.md. Taps dispatched before them report success and do nothing.

• Clear every Expo dialog and overlay by accessibility (axe tap --label), not coordinates.
• Every factual claim here and in the references cites a primary source (Expo, Apple, AXe's

own help); a prior-art skill is never a source.

Out of scope

• The simulator itself, its chrome, capture, and permissions: ios-simulator.
• What makes an app addressable (accessibility props): mobile-accessibility.
• The dev menu's items and React Native DevTools (shared with Android): expo-developer-tools.
• Build, runtime, and automation failures: ios-simulator-triage.

References

• references/execution-modes.md: the four ways to run an Expo app and when to use each.
• references/expo-go.md: the Expo Go path and its fixed-native-set limit.
• references/development-builds.md: building and connecting a dev client.
• references/known-prompts.md: the recurring dialogs, the dev menu, and the inspector trap.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: simiancraft
• Source: simiancraft/simiancraft-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.