Capture iOS Simulator video for App Preview

Question

Okay  so we can now submit video previews of our apps on the App Store  According to Apple we should do so with an iOS8 device and OSX 10 10  The problem is you have to have all the different devices  4   4 7   5 5  and iPad     Is there an alternative to this   I am thinking of capturing a video of the simulator  The problem is the device screen is bigger than my FullHD monitor when shown in 100  resolution  Any solution that can capture a video right from the simulator in full resolution   Edit  Since a lot of people are answering questions I m not asking let me say   - Recording one device size and scaling it is not what I m asking   - How to record any app preview is not what I m asking  - How you do your previews is not what I m asking   What I am asking is can you record a video from the simulator in 100  resolution if it doesn t fit on the screen

User · Answer

The Apple s Simulator User Guide states in Taking a Screenshot or Recording a Video Using the Command Line paragraph      You can take a screenshot or record a video of the simulator window using the xcrun command-line utility      To record a video  use the recordVideo operation in your Terminal   xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo  lt filename gt   lt extension gt    Note that the file will be created in the current directory of your Terminal     If you want to save the video file in your Desktop folder  use the following command   xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo   Desktop  lt filename gt   lt extension gt      To stop recording  press Control-C in Terminal

User · Answer

You can do this for free with the following tools   You will need at least one real device  I used an iPhone 5   Capture the video with the simple  but excellent appshow  note this is a very barebones tool  but it s very easy to learn    This will export at the native device resolution  640x1136      Resize with ffmpeg   Due to rounding  you can go directly between the resolutions  but you have to oversize and then crop    ffmpeg -i video mov -filter v scale 1084 1924 -c a copy video 1084 mov ffmpeg -i video 1084 mov -filter v  crop 1080 1920 0 0  -c a copy video 1080 mov   For ipad  you can crop and then add a letterbox   However  cropping like this usually won t yield a video that looks exactly like your app does on the ipad   YMMV   ffmpeg -i video mov -filter v  crop 640 960 0 0  -c a copy video 640 960 mo ffmpeg -i video 640 960 mov -filter v  pad 768 1024 64 32  -c a copy video 768 1024 mov ffmpeg -i video 768 1024 mov -filter v scale 900 1200 -c a copy video 900 1200 mov

User · Answer

Apple recommends doing so on an actual device and has a guide on how to do this using QuickTime and iMovie on iOS and OS X  https   developer apple com app-store app-previews imovie Creating-App-Previews-with-iMovie pdf  Summary    Capture Screen Recordings with QuickTime Player   Connect your iOS device to your Mac using a Lightning cable  Open QuickTime Player  Choose File   New Movie Recording  In the window that appears  select your iOS device as the Camera and Microphone input source    Create an App Preview with iMovie  Import Screen Recordings  Next you import the screen recording files that you captured with QuickTime Player into iMovie  In iMovie    Choose File   Import Media  In the window that appears  select the screen recording files    Create an App Preview Project  To start a new app preview project  choose File   New App Preview  A timeline appears where you can add and arrange clips to create your preview

User · Answer

From Xcode 9 and on you can take screenshot or record Video using simctl binary that you can find it here     Applications Xcode app Contents Developer usr bin simctl   You can use it with xcrun to command the simulator in the command line     For taking screenshot run this in command line   xcrun simctl io booted screenshot  For recording video on the simulator using command line    xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo fileName videoType e g mp4 mov     Note  You can use this command in any directory of your choice  The file will be saved in that directory

User · Answer

Using new release of Xcode 12 5 you can simply record simulator screen using     R  For details you can visit here

User · Answer

A tip for users who like to use ZSH functions   You can simplify things a little by adding a function that does the same thing as  Tikhonov Alexander s answer   Start out by typing    edit    zshrc   into your terminal   Then add this function someplace in the file   function recsim         echo -n  Use CTRL C to stop recording       xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo --codec h264 --mask black   1 mp4       To use  type something like   recsim appPreview   into your terminal window   Note  Terminal must be restarted after adding the function before it will work   This function is adapted from Antoine Van Der Lee s blog post on how to do this in bash  which can be found here

User · Answer

Here is a solution that works and doesn t cost  300  FinalCut Pro   but it does require ScreenFlow  ScreenFlow app in AppStore    100     Hookup your device to a Mac running Yosemite  Launch Quicktime and select File Newi Movie Recording Launch ScreenFlow and capture your video Edit your video inside ScreenFlow  add text  music  etc  Crop the video so that it only contains the device screen Export the video with the size required by Apple  e g   1334x750

User · Answer

I m actually surprised no one provided my answer  This is what you do  this will work if you have at least 1 eligible device     Record  edit and finish the App Preview with the device you have  Export as a file  Go to your Simulators and print screen 1 shot on each the different sizes of iPhone   Create new App Preview in iMovie  Insert the screenshot of the desired size FIRST  then add the file of the App Preview you ve already made   Export using Share -  App Preview Repeat step 4 to 6 for new sizes    You should be able to get your App Preview in the desired resolution

User · Answer

In my MBP s Settings   Displays   Display  I see a setting for  Resolution  Default for Display   Scaled   I set it to  More space   then try the various simulators  all of which seem to fit on the enlarged screen at 100   I suspect that wouldn t work with your FullHD screen though     An alternative might be to try to install some sort of VNC server solution on the simulator  like https   github com wingify vnc  and record that with a VNC recorder - I believe there s a Python VNC recorder out there

User · Answer

Unfortunately  the iOS Simulator app does not support saving videos   The easiest thing to do is use Quicktime Player to make a screen recording   Of course  you ll see the mouse interacting with it which is not what you want  but I don t have a better option for you at this time

User · Answer

I was facing the same problem  It has a very simple solution that worked for me  Just follow these steps   1 Make a preview video in iMovie   2 Export video using share file option  Choose 1920x1080 as it can be used for 5S  and 6 plus   3 Download Appshow for Mac by techsmith  https   www techsmith com techsmith-appshow html   It is specially made for making app preview videos  But i don t recommend it for making videos but rather just for exporting   4 Choose a new App Preview video and customise it by choosing fewer frames which you can later delete   5 Import your iMovie video into this template  On the top right corner you can choose any resolution you want  appshow has all the resolutions required for app preview   6 Finally  just choose the device and export the video in your selected resolution

User · Answer

As of today in 2019  Apple has made life much easier for low budget or one-man project developers like me   You can just use the terminal command from one of the above posts to record videos from the wanted device simulator  And then use iMovie s New App Preview feature    xcrun  Applications Xcode app Contents Developer usr bin simctl io booted recordVideo pro3new mov   iMovie -  File -  New App Preview

User · Answer

This is the way I found easiest and you only need one iPhone and iPad    Record device screen with QuickTime Player    Connect your device  Open QuickTime Player  Choose File   New Movie Recording  CMD   alt   N  In the window that appears  select your iOS device as the camera with maximum resolution  Save video file  CMD   S    Open iMovie   Select File -  New App Preview Drag an IMAGE from your app with the biggest resolution ex  a 1920 x 1080 screenshot to the project   This makes the video 1920 x 1080 even if you recorded with a iPhone 5  Drag the movie you recorded to the project  Save by choosing File -  Share -  App Preview   Now do this with all of your devices or   Download Handbreak  https   handbrake fr downloads php  And resize the high res video    Drag your high res video to Handbreak Select  Picture Settings  icon Resize to the correct size - close and press  Start  icon - gets saved to desktop

User · Answer

The best tool I have found is Appshow  Visit http   www techsmith com techsmith-appshow html  I do not work for them

User · Answer

You can use the QuickTime screen recording and the iOS Simulators to do your video recordings  The tricky thing here is to get the correct size so that iMovie can detect the output resolution when you go to export the AppPreview  I haven t found a way to select the output res in iMovie so if must detected by the format of the media you are using  It may take you several tries but it s doable  It s one of those  do I have  300 for FinalCut Pro or do I have an hour or so of my time  You only need three recordings as mentioned above  I could actually do two of them on devices because I have them but I don t have an iPhone 6  yet           I also like the simulators because you can use something like SimFinger to simulate gestures and pressing of buttons   Good luck

User · Answer

You can record a portion of the screen with built-in screenshot utility    Press Shift-Command-5 to show a control panel  Select   Select a portion of the screen you want to record  That would be the iPhone simulator  Click  to stop recording  A thumbnail will appear at the bottom right corner of the screen  You can edit it before saving    If you want to visualize mouse clicks  after step 1 select Options control and enable Show Mouse Clicks

User · Answer

For Xcode 8 2 or later  You can take videos and screenshots of Simulator using the xcrun simctl  a command-line utility to control the Simulator   Run your app on the simulator  Open a terminal  Run the command  To take a screenshot xcrun simctl io booted screenshot  lt filename gt   lt file extension gt  For example  xcrun simctl io booted screenshot myScreenshot png  To take a video xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo  lt filename gt   lt file extension gt  For example  xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo appVideo mov    Press ctrl   C to stop recording the video     The default location for the created file is the current directory   Xcode 11 2 and later gives extra options  From Xcode 11 2 Beta Release Notes  simctl video recording now produces smaller video files  supports HEIC compression  and takes advantage of hardware encoding support where available  In addition  the ability to record video on iOS 13  tvOS 13  and watchOS 6 devices has been restored   You could use additional flags  xcrun simctl io --help Set up a device IO operation  Usage  simctl io  lt device gt   lt operation gt   lt arguments gt            recordVideo  --codec  lt codec gt    --display  lt display gt    --mask  lt policy gt    --force   lt file or url gt          Records the display to a QuickTime movie at the specified file or url          --codec      Specifies the codec type   quot h264 quot  or  quot hevc quot   Default is  quot hevc quot            --display    iOS  supports  quot internal quot  or  quot external quot   Default is  quot internal quot                        tvOS  supports only  quot external quot                       watchOS  supports only  quot internal quot           --mask       For non-rectangular displays  handle the mask by policy                       ignored  The mask is ignored and the unmasked framebuffer is saved                       alpha  Not supported  but retained for compatibility  the mask is rendered black                       black  The mask is rendered black           --force      Force the output file to be written to  even if the file already exists       screenshot  --type  lt type gt    --display  lt display gt    --mask  lt policy gt    lt file or url gt          Saves a screenshot as a PNG to the specified file or url use  quot - quot  for stdout           --type       Can be  quot png quot    quot tiff quot    quot bmp quot    quot gif quot    quot jpeg quot   Default is png           --display    iOS  supports  quot internal quot  or  quot external quot   Default is  quot internal quot                        tvOS  supports only  quot external quot                       watchOS  supports only  quot internal quot                        You may also specify a port by UUID         --mask       For non-rectangular displays  handle the mask by policy                       ignored  The mask is ignored and the unmasked framebuffer is saved                       alpha  The mask is used as premultiplied alpha                       black  The mask is rendered black   Now you can take a screenshot in jpeg  with mask  for non-rectangular displays  and some other flags  xcrun simctl io booted screenshot --type jpeg --mask black screenshot jpeg

User · Answer

Taking a Screenshot or Recording a Video Using the Command Line      You can take a screenshot or record a video of the simulator window using the xcrun command-line utility          Launch your app in Simulator    Launch Terminal  located in  Applications Utilities   and enter the appropriate command          To take a screenshot  use the screenshot operation   xcrun simctl io booted screenshot       You can specify an optional filename at the end of the command    To record a video  use the recordVideo operation   xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo  lt filename gt   lt extension gt        To stop recording  press Control-C in Terminal            Note  You must specify a filename for recordVideo             The default location for the created file is the current directory       For more information on simctl  run this command in Terminal   xcrun simctl help       For more information on the io subcommand of simctl  run this command   xcrun simctl io help       From Apple Documentation

User · Answer

For Apple TV Simulator  tvOS  AppleTV  you should add --display external parameter  I use this to save to desktop  xcrun simctl io booted recordVideo --display external --codec h264 --force   Desktop SimulatorVideo mov  --force to rewrite if file exist --codec to higher framerate

User · Answer

You can combine QuickTime Player   iMovie Free   At first choose your desired simulator from xcode and record screen using QuickTime Player  After that use iMovie for making App Preview and finally upload the video with Safari browser It s simple

User · Answer

You can use QuickTime Player to record the screen    Open QuickTime Player Select File from the menu Select New Screen recording   Now from the Screen Recording window  click on record button   It will provide you with an option to record the entire screen or a selective portion of your screen   You will have to make a selection of your simulator so that only the simulator portion will be recorded

User · Answer

You should use QuickTime in Yosemite to connect and record the screen of your iOS devices   iPhone Portrait  When you finished the recording  you can use iMovie to edit the video  When you re working on an iPhone Portrait App Preview  the resolution must be 1080x1920 but iMovie can only export in 16 9  1920x1080    One solution would be to imported the recorded video with the resolution 1080x1920 and rotate it 90 degree  Then export the movie at 1920x1080 and rotate the exported video back 90 degrees using ffmpeg and the following command  ffmpeg -i Landscape mp4 -vf  transpose 1  Portrait mp4   iPad  The iPad is a little bit trickier because it requires a resolution of 1200x900  4 3  but iMovie only exports in 16 9   Here is what I ve done    Record the movie on iPad Air in Landscape  1200x900  4 3  Import into iMovie and export as 1920x1080  16 9  iPadLandscape16 9-1920x1080 mp4  Remove left and right black bars to a video with 1440x1080  The width of one bar is 240  ffmpeg -i iPadLandscape16 9-1920x1080 mp4 -filter v  crop 1440 1080 240 0  -c a copy iPadLandscape4 3-1440x1080 mp4  Scale down movie to 1220x900  ffmpeg -i iPadLandscape4 3-1440x1080 mp4 -filter v scale 1200 -1 -c a copy iPadLandscape4 3-1200x900 mp4    Taken from my answer on the Apple Developer Forum

[ios] Capture iOS Simulator video for App Preview

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