By Sergio De Simone
Publication Date: 2026-09-12 16:00:00
The open-Source project vphone-cli enables a full iOS 27 system to run as a virtual machine on Apple Silicon. Built on Apple’s own Virtualization.framework rather than traditional emulation, the project opens up new possibilities for security research, reverse engineering, and automated iOS testing.
Building on previous work by wh1te4ever to run a virtual iPhone without using emulation, vphone-cli automates the entire process. This goes from downloading the firmware and patching the boot chain to performing a DFU restore and completing the first boot. The resulting virtual iPhone provides SSH access with root privileges, as well as VNC access to its graphical interface.
Apple has never officially provided an iOS VM for developers or security researchers. However, the technology it developed for Private Cloud Compute (PCC) to facilitate security research on the platform through a Virtual Research Environment, included an “iPhone Research Environment Virtual Machine”. The vphone-cli project essentially brings those components together and streamlines the process of turning them into a working iPhone VM.
Xcode already includes an iPhone simulator which runs a subset of iOS userspace components adapted to run on macOS hardware. However, the simulator has several limitations, including restricted support for features such as camera access, Bluetooth, Metal, App Store app installation, and iCloud. It also uses a different SDK target from…