So, Xcode doesn’t support your iPhone’s OS version. Here’s how to fix it.
I was working on a project which was built using Xcode 12.4 due to some of the dependencies are not supporting the latest versions of apple Xcode yet. So, basically I am a fan of the latest iOS features that are getting reveled at every WWDC and I keep my devices up to date with latest OS releases.
Unfortunately, after WWDC I badly wanted to get my hands on the latest iOS 15 beta public release and I registered my phone (iPhone Xs Max) with the apple beta program and installed iOS 15 public beta 2 over the weekend. Just to note that it’s a huge update of 6 GB. During the weekend while I was checking the new features I felt it’s worth the 6GB I spent on the update.
On Monday as usual in the morning I started checking on my task list for the sprint and started working on them. Mostly I use the simulator as to debug and test my code as the Mac Books are well optimised to handle the simulator with Xcode. On Wednesday I picked up a new OKR which requires some debugging with launching instagram stories. That’s the moment I wanted to build and debug my code on a real device and got stuck with the issue that I am solving with this article. So, my Xcode started showing that my device is an unsupported version of iOS and it can’t build the project on that target device.
Xcode was showing this error as my device was using a higher iOS version (iOS 14.6) which is not supported by the Xcode version (Xcode 12.4)I have on my Mac Book. Initially I had iOS 15 public beta 2 and I downgraded my device to the lowest possible os version which is iOS 14.6. Unfortunately iOS 14.6 also was not supporting the Xcode version I have. Since the highest version of iOS that Xcode 12.4 is supporting was iOS 14.3, I was trying to find out an iPSW file to downgrade my device.
So, after all the trouble this is how I fixed my Xcode 12.4 to support a higher version of iOS. Moreover, this simple workaround saves me from a lot of trouble.
Step 01 — go to your finder → applications folder and find out the Xcode application.
Step 02 — Right click on the Xcode application and click show package contents
Step 03 — From there you need to navigate to
/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport as shown in the screenshot below.
If you carefully check the DeviceSupport directory you will see a list of folders with the naming of supported iOS versions by that Xcode. Basically this folder contains the supporting files for that particular Xcode version.
Here comes the trick 🚀🚀
Now you need to check for the supporting files of the iOS version that you need to run with your current Xcode (which doesn’t support the iOS version that you have on your device). You can find it in GitHub repositories that I have listed below.
https://github.com/iGhibli/iOS-DeviceSupport
https://github.com/filsv/iPhoneOSDeviceSupport
Don’t forget to support the repos by giving them a star ⭐⭐⭐
Step 04 — Now you can download the supporting files of the required iOS version from any of the above repositories and move them into the /Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport
Step 05 — Simply Close and Quit from your Xcode and reopen it.
Now you can run your app in the particular iOS device without any problem or error.
Alternative Solution…
As you download the supporting files from one of the above repos, you can download the latest Xcode and navigate to the /Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport path and copy the DeviceSupport folder or the iOS version folder into your older Xcode version as well.
Hope these simple steps will save your time as it helped me to continue with my tasks without being blocked.
Will meet you with another one… Thank you!
