Device Hub sucks

Hi, I'm sorry you are having trouble with Device Hub, and hopefully I can help you out here.

First of all, pairing is not a new requirement with iOS 27 or Xcode 27, and does not in itself persist a connection. You needed to pair your devices for development in all prior versions of Xcode as well.

Next, if you don't want an interactive session with your physical device, that's fine too. You don't need one to take a screenshot. Just select the device and take the screenshot from the menu. It sounds like you still see the screen sharing indicator upon disconnect, which should disappear within a few seconds after the session finishes tearing down. If you don't see it disappear within a minute, please file a feedback report with sysdiagnoses collected from both the device and host.

You can also use the devicectl command line tool to take screenshots (and a whole lott more).

Can you elaborate on how Device Hub is interfering with the microphone functions of your app? I don't see how it could be as it does not do anything with mic input.

Thank you for the reply. Can you elaborate on what you mean by "Just select the device and take the screenshot from the menu. " What menu are you referring to?

regarding the right-click "Stop Screen Sharing" - In Device Hub, the UI goes back to just showing a button that says "View Screen", indicating that there is no screen sharing session active. but my phone continues showing the purple screen sharing indicator.It does not go away. I can quit Device Hub to make it go away.

As far as the microphone, I don't know what to tell you.My app is a custom audio transcription app.And when I try to transcribe with that sharing session active, It doesn't work.I suspect it has something to do with also trying to simultaneously run in the on-screen simulator thing.

Ah, thanks for that response. That clears things up.

While an interactive session is active, mic and camera input is disabled for privacy reasons. I believe that is what you are running into.

The "Stop Screen Sharing" button and quitting Device Hub should do the exact same thing as far as the device is concerned. Both will disconnect the active screen sharing session. The device will not tear it down immediately. You will see the session indicator for a little while longer before the device tears down capture.

You should see a "Screenshot" menu item (shift-cmd-s) right below device rotation and various menu items for device input events.

Another thing I would like to point out is that DeviceHub does not seem to work with older devices. My original iPad Pro is not running iOS 27, and so I cannot take a screenshot.Command Shift S does not work.

Device Hub sucks. At least in its current iteration.

• Simulator rotation is bugged (issue doesn't exist when controlling the same iOS 27 runtime with Xcode 26's Simulator app)
• Debug menu—gone
• Device list in Dock icon context menu—gone
• Many menu shortcuts are missing
• Importing files into the gallery or file system—gone

That's on top of the plethora of windowing bugs this application still experiences. Used to be that AppKit developers got that aspect of development right. Now it seems there are very few AppKit developers left, even at Apple.

It's clear that whoever is implementing or vibe-coding this is not a power user of the simulator. Or Mac apps in general. Most of the features mentioned above are still supported by the simulator runtime just fine, as evident, again, by targeting the same runtimes with the old Simulator app. So skipping a debug menu is a choice, not a necessity.

I get it, you had to ship the resizable simulator feature … for iPhone mirroring wink wink. But the situation is dire.