As of Appium XCUITest driver 9.9, download-wda-sim is available. The script command helps you to download a proper WDA prebuilt packages from GitHub releases for Simulator use. https://github.com/appium/ruby_lib_core/pull/625/files will be a reference to use it.
- Get a prebuilt WDA to your local place with
appium driver run xcuitest download-wda-sim --platform=ios --outdir=/path/to/wda - Set the downloaded WebDriverAgentRunner app to
prebuiltWDAPathcapability withusePreinstalledWDAcapability. - Run automation
Then, the appium session will use the prebuilt WDA to launch WDA on the target simulator. It will skip running xcodebuild. It means you can skip xcodebuild’s running duration.
I had no issue running the prebuilt package with iOS 18 and 17 on my local, but it could have an issue running the prebuilt package for wider OS versions. Then, you would need to run the xcodebuild method.