vphone-cli: Run virtual iPhones on Apple Silicon Macs

RepositoryLakr233/vphone-cliTool

vphone-cli creates and runs virtualized iOS instances on Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 15 or newer. The tool leverages Apple's Virtualization.framework and the PCC research VM infrastructure.

Key points

  1. Virtualizes iPhone firmware directly on physical Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 15 or later.
  2. Leverages Apple's Virtualization.framework alongside the Private Cloud Compute (PCC) research VM infrastructure.
  3. Version 2.x handles firmware preparation, restore, and VM controls inside VPhone.bundle, supported by the vphone-launchpad GUI app.
  4. Requires host configuration in macOS Recovery (csrutil enable --without debug and csrutil allow-research-guests enable) and an AMFI helper.
  5. Supports guest environment bootstrapping (Irisin) with package management via apt and bash.

Why it matters

Security researchers and iOS developers have traditionally depended on physical test devices or commercial cloud services like Corellium. vphone-cli provides a local virtualization workflow utilizing Apple's research VM features.

Analysis

The project addresses the long-standing limitation of running local iOS virtual machines on macOS. By combining Apple's Virtualization.framework with matched iPhone and cloudOS IPSWs, it establishes a functional local guest environment. With over 14,000 GitHub stars and a notarized launcher in version 2.1.0, the tool appears well maintained. However, it requires modifying SIP/Recovery settings and handling large firmware files, making it suitable primarily for security researchers and low-level platform engineers.

Mentioned links

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Summary generated by AI (Gemini 3.8 Flash, 29 September 2026). It may contain errors – the original source is authoritative.

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