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Aman Mittal
Aman Mittal

Posted on • Originally published at amanhimself.dev

How to use iOS simulator in full-screen

When working on React Native or Expo applications, it is important to create focus to get in a flow. Sometimes, there are a lot of tasks to cover and very little time. To help focus on the task ahead, one way to speed up development is to use full-screen mode for iOS simulators. For example, a focused environment on my laptop screen includes zero visibility for Dock and the menu bar.

Before Xcode version 12, the full-screen support was hidden behind a user flag. The below command can be run to solve the issue for older Xcode versions.



defaults write com.apple.iphonesimulator AllowFullscreenMode -bool YES


Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

With the latest version of Xcode and each new macOS version trying to outperform its previous one, it has never been easy to enable full-screen mode for an iOS simulator.

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In the above image, observe that VSCode editor is on the left and the iOS simulator is on the right.

To enter the full-screen mode, click on the resize window icon (green icon) on the application (iOS simulator and the editor/IDE of your choice).

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Then, you can position one application on the left and another on the right.

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It's already challenging to keep distractions at bay. But, sometimes, a little bit of focus can go a long way.

Top comments (2)

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bhatvikrant profile image
Vikrant Bhat

Thanks for sharing this! I didn’t know I needed this, but this is definitely improving my workflow.

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amanhimself profile image
Aman Mittal

Glad its helpful :)