Setting Background image in simulator home-screen

Question

I was scratching my brains over something when this popped in my mind. Can we set the simulator's home-screen background image to an image of our choice? Case in point is Xcode 3.2.2 simulator 3.1.3.

Answer 1

Dragged the image onto the simulator (iOS 9.3) as @boltclock suggests, but nothing happened. However, I then noticed that the images I dragged were showing up in the Photos app on the simulator. From there I just set the wallpapers the same way that you set them on a physical device. Did not need to restart the simulator.

Answer 2

Hmm. Probably, since you cannot set backgroundimage on your homescreen(exept from the locked view) on on actual iPhone pre iOS4, you cannot do so in the simulator either.

Answer 3

I thought I wasn't able to do this, but then I dragged the bottom row of options to the left and low and behold, there is the "Set as wallpaper" option. :-)

Answer 4

Certain versions of the simulator appear to support this, not just for the home screen but for the lock screen too (which you get to with Command ⌘+L):

1. Drag an image from your Mac to the simulator.
2. Mobile Safari opens. Click and hold the image.
3. Choose Save Image.
4. Go to Photos.app, and into the photo album.
5. Choose your image, and set it as the home screen background like you do on a device.
6. You may need to restart the simulator.

Note that since this isn't exactly officially supported, it may or may not work for you depending on your version of Xcode or the simulator.

Answer 5

It is possible (again) with the iOS Simulator version 6 (for iOS6).

First, add some images to your photo library. You can do this by using Mobile Safari (either surf the web or drag a local image to the simulator). Then perform a long press and save to camera roll.

Second, open "Photos", select the image and set as Background.

Third, restart the simulator (this irritated me at first, as it doesn't seem to work immediately)