Safari Responsive Design Mode Simulators are not showing up.

I have simulators downloaded to my 14" M2 Pro Macbook Pro, and for some reason, I cannot see any simulators as an option in Safari's Responsive Design Mode.

Am I missing something obvious, or is my computer bugged?

Above is an image of the Responsive Design Mode showing no simulators. I would offer more screenshots to prove that I have simulators installed, but it won't let me upload any more photos for some reason.

  • The simulators can be installed by installing Xcode.

    However, compared to previously, it's so much more cumbersome to quickly test, inspect and debug different viewports for devices now.

    Previously we had a set of device icons that you could click and this was great. Please bring that back.

  • I agree with every web developer in this forum. Bring back the Responsive Design Mode simulators. Why do Apple programmers try to simplify things by making them more difficult???

    APPLE, please bring back the good. Developers are really disappointed.

    Please notify me when you've added them back to Safari.

    Thanks

  • This is just horrible. I wonder if the removal of the simulators was to improve the performance of the browser. Who am I kidding, Apple just want us web developers to us some subset of Xcode for analytics, more disk space so we can get that sweet iCloud+, and lower the performance of my machine so I buy a new one. What a shame.

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Hello, you're not the only one troubled by this issue. As a web developer, I'm disappointed and, at the same time, furious. The Safari console has always been the best for me, and removing this option is absurd.

I use it for work every day, and now I'm out of luck. I've tried other browsers, and it works great everywhere else, but in Safari, they've unfortunately completely ruined it.

I don't know what to do. It's nonsense, and simulating through Xcode doesn't make sense. I don't want to open another window; I want to debug directly in Safari as I did before.

APPLE, please bring back the good. Developers are really disappointed.

Well ... going back to chrome only for this reason ...

@Nesta78 it is sad, sometimes I need to use chrome too, but I feel that I am not able to 100% switch because keychain, can’t export Safari history… too many thing, but if you know how to fully switch to Chrome, I will be really happy!

Thank you so much!

This is a huge disappointment and safari degradation! I don't need XCode to use different screen emulators. Now I'm forced to switch to another browser. Bravo, safari developers ! ...my applause...

@goodwaysarts this is biggest disappointment from Safari devs yet.

Is there anyway to get this functionality back? Legit have been using this for debugging websites for the past 5+ years - it was a super valuable tool. Especially when you have debug the device in various orientation for quick layout changes. Simulator was always reserved for very specific use cases.

I was able to get the simulators to show up after manually launching the Simulator app (and making sure that I had simulators/platforms installed). After I manually launched the Simulator app, and opened a couple of the simulators, I rebooted. Then all of my installed simulators showed up in Safari.

With that said, the removing of the device views is a huge step backwards. Make sure that you send feedback about this... Here is mine. I am not sure if you can see it or not. https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/feedback/13225118

I did a live stream about this last week in case it might help anyone else. This link should take you to where I start talking about the RDM. https://www.youtube.com/live/iAWa-mE3xcM?si=etM5-7mJxhX4eLCY&t=2491

  • Thanks for the video - guess that's the best workaround for now. Hoping they add the original UI back...

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This is very sad indeed. And though I watched joeworkman‘s video – and though the simulators now show up in Safari: They still don't work! This is a really disturbing and annoying and unnecessary step back for my website development … This should be immediately corrected! And brought back to the old version!

  • I am having this same issue. Simulators are showing up in Safari (Sonoma). Simulator.app is open (extremely slowly) with Safari launched (iOS17). In Safari (Sonoma), I go into responsive design mode and select the open simulator AND ........ nothing happens.

    It took me two hours just to get the Simulators thing working and all I need to do is test multiple aspect ratios for a landing page. A complete waste of my time for a simple thing that would have taken 2 minutes in Safari (Ventura).

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Totally regretting updating iOS to Sonoma 17.1. Having to use simulators is more than overhead, I can't even get beyond SSL cert problems due to the simulator complaining that it can't open the page because it could not establish a secure connection! I get the same error when I run the Safari simulator firectly in Xcode. Wasting hours of productivity.

The old simulator way, is not going to work anymore ?

  • I used this all the time and it sped things up tremendously. Stupid to have to waste precious storage space on Xcode, that I don't even need for anything else.

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It's so annoying to see that Apple removed device options on the top. Why? Is there any valid reason to remove that? Now, we have to enter sizes manually to set the screen width in responsive design mode. Please Apple, bring back this feature.

Hello,

we are working as a small web-design company. In the last years we loved to use the Safari Responsive Design Mode to quickly show how our websites look on other devices / screen-sizes.

This changed now. Now we need to install XCode and run some "Simulations" regarding which device we want to test. Its complicated and makes the progress of quickly checking the look and feel more complicated than ever before.

So please, consider bringing back the "classic" Safari Responsive Design Mode.

I also filled the Safari Feedback Survey, maybe all others can do that too: https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/737730

I'm in the same boat as everyone here.

I read all the posts about the missing responsive simulator mode. Does Chrome have one? If yes, I guess it's good bye Safari and hello Chrome.

I will check now, as it appears the missing responsive simulator mode complaints, which started 4 months ago have not been addressed by Apple. I just downloaded the updated Safari yesterday and now wish I hadn't.

Stupid me! I should know by now that Apple doesn't really give a crap about all the loyal Mac users that were their most important customers 28 years ago when the stock was trading at $5 and all the pundits said Apple was going bankrupt. This was before Steve Jobs came back and launched the iPod, and then the iPhone. We were the only real loyal building blocks that kept Apple alive on the way to becoming the Trillion dollar company they are now.