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iOS simulator: devicekit agent stuck reporting SpringBoard even when app is frontmost (Xcode 26.6 / iOS 26.5 & 18.5) #420

Description

@polteq-test-rv

Environment

mobilecli: 1.0.9 (also reproduced on 1.0.0 before upgrading)
devicekit agent (com.mobilenext.devicekit-iosUITests.xctrunner): 0.0.26
macOS: 26.6.2 (Apple Silicon), Xcode: 26.6 (17F113)
Reproduced on iPhone 17/iOS 26.5 and iPhone 16/iOS 18.5 (same host Xcode) — rules out the target iOS runtime as the cause, points at the host Xcode 26.6 toolchain.
Summary
apps launch, dump ui and screenshot all report/reflect the Home Screen (SpringBoard) even when a different app is genuinely in the foreground and interactive. apps foreground also incorrectly reports com.apple.springboard.

Reproduction

Boot a simulator, install and launch an app via apps launch — returns {"status":"ok", ...}.
dump ui always returns the Home Screen's icon tree, never the launched app's content (retry if it first times out with "timed out waiting for WebDriverAgent to be ready" — that also happens intermittently).
Cross-checked with xcrun simctl io screenshot out.png (bypassing mobilecli) — this correctly shows the launched app's real UI.
apps foreground also reports com.apple.springboard despite another app genuinely being frontmost.
Tried, did not help: simulator reboot, agent install --force, upgrading 1.0.0 → 1.0.9, an older iOS runtime (18.5) on the same host Xcode, and the MOBILECLI_WDA_PATH workaround from #303 (downloaded WDA v11.4.1 and pointed the env var at it — the installed agent bundle id/version was unaffected and the bug persisted identically; per the git history (#312, "refactor: change package wda to devicekit") this version no longer uses a separately-downloadable WDA build, so that workaround doesn't apply here).

Suspicion: given #303 (WDA failing to build/start on Xcode 26.x) and the timing, the devicekit XCTest runner may have its own separate Xcode-26 issue — possibly attaching its session to SpringBoard instead of switching context to the actually-launched app.

Activity

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