Boot a Virtual iPhone on Your Mac with vphone-cli

You can now spin up a virtual iPhone right on your Apple Silicon Mac.

Developer Lakr233 released vphone-cli, an open-source tool that boots virtual iPhones using Apple's native Virtualization framework and research VM infrastructure. The utility automates the whole pipeline: downloading firmware, patching boot chains, and booting the guest system. It requires an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 15 Sequoia or newer, along with relaxed SIP and AMFI security settings.

Why it matters: iOS security researchers and developers don't need physical hardware or proprietary software to run custom environments. The tool lets you create, clone, and export virtual iPhones with simple CLI commands. It includes five patch options, ranging from light security bypasses to full jailbreaks with Sileo and TrollStore auto-installed.

Here's the gist to start: install the tool via Homebrew, configure your system security permissions, and run vphone-cli vm create myphone -V jb. Once the VM boots, connect over SSH on port 22222 or launch a graphical desktop session via VNC on port 5901.

If the virtual screen hangs on "Press home to continue," just right-click in your VNC viewer.