iPhone Simulator: SpringBoard failed to launch application with error: 7 - iphone

Question

Building an iPhone project results in:
Failed to launch simulated application: SpringBoard failed to launch application with error: 7
And the app doesn't install on the simulator. What's this all about? What's SpringBoard and what is error 7?

Answer 1

I had the exact same problem - I reset the iphone simulator and then quit the simulator (i.e. command q) then started it again.
Worked.

Answer 2

Boy, is the answer to this one hard to find, but I came up with a workaround. The simulator gives this error if it has any problems with accessing files in ~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/. This could be a permissions problem, but in my case it was even more subtle: my home directory is NFS mounted, and that seems to somehow be the source of the problem.
The basic workaround is to create a directory local to the machine, and link the iPhone Simulator's directory to that local directory. You shouldn't need to move your source files or project directory; it's just the simulator targets that are the problem.
Here is one series of steps to accomplish the workaround, to be typed in at the terminal
(1-3 done on every machine you'll be developing on, 4-6 once in your NFS-mounted home directory):
sudo mkdir /usr/local/iphone-dirs
sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/iphone-dirs
mkdir /usr/local/iphone-dirs/my-dir
cd "~/Library/Application Support/"
rm -rf "iPhone Simulator/"
ln -s /usr/local/iphone-dirs/my-dir/ "iPhone Simulator"
There are obviously many variations on this theme; I suspect that using a locally-hosted directory in /tmp would be fine (and not require admin privs, but would have to be redone every time the system is rebooted). As given, steps 1 and 2 are good if you will have multiple users using these machines that you don't want to collide with each other. If you have your own personal machine but NFS-mount your homedir, you could probably just skip to something like step 3 (and sudo it). Just make sure that whatever dir you create in step 3 is the dir that you symlink to in step 6.

Answer 3

No need to quite the simulator or delete the app..
Just select simulator, press command + shift + h + h and remove the app from background process(long press on app icon) then run your app again.

Answer 4

I started with a new project in Xcode and got the error 3 message, but otherwise same deal. New damn project - so no problems with broken code I added or name mistakes or anything else. But the app would build but fail to run in Simulator with the Springboard -3 error code. I've seen this before lots of times, and the basic kill-the-app-in-simulator, clean-and-run would work, but not this time.
Turns out my old 2007 iMac barely has enough RAM and disk space free any more. I'm running Mavericks, and I hid everything but Xcode and the Simulator, then ran a memory cleaning utility to free up every bit of RAM available (got back up to 1GB free or so), and then the app runs in the Simulator without a hitch. No more Springboard error.
I hadn't seen "too little RAM" listed as a reason for this error yet, so this may be useful for somebody else.

Answer 5

Springboard is the app that launches apps. It's the home screen of the iPhone. I had tons of problems when I tried to get my app running on the phone -- turns out that I had an older version of the SDK that was incompatible with the version of the OS my phone had. Reinstalling the latest SDK did the trick.
Also, have heard that clearing the XCode cache sometimes helps (didn't for me) -- XCode menu->Clear cache...

Answer 6

Maybe this will help: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1605042&tstart=72
I had similar issues when I was trying to install my current development on the iPhone and this information about the AppID fixed it.
For quick reference, the AppID you created when you started creating certificates for development and provisioning of your iphone asked you to create a reverse domain name identifier. Something like: QS32H9XPNE.domain.subdomain.companyname.*
To correctly link up your application to the AppID would require you to set the identifier in the application to domain.subdomain.companyname.application.*
Hope this helps

Answer 7

I had the same problem but this solution works...!!!
1)Deleting the app from simulator.
2)Quitting simulator.
3)Restart simulator.

Answer 8

XCode menu->Clear cache solved my problem.

Answer 9

This happens to me when i switch from testing on the device to testing on simulator. Restarting Xcode and simulator gets rid of this error for me.Silly.

Answer 10

I initially solved this by restarting the iPhone Simulator. But this shouldn't be the answer.
The error came from editing the info plist.
Check that you didn't change any values that were set before provisioning your app for your device.
I wanted to change my Bundle Identifier, but had to go back to the default one after having this error.
Now it's fixed.
Next step will be to get a new provision Id with the Bundle Id changed.

Answer 11

I had same problem, the Simulator would just hang. This is on a fresh install of XC 3.2.5 GM and using Simulator with 4.2 SDK. Apps would run fine on a real device but the simulator would just hang.
I ended up changing the iPhone App Support directory and all sub dirs to 777 access permissions. Not a great idea to 777 -R, but I was desperate and it worked.
$sudo chmod -R 777 ~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/

Answer 12

For me this was solution. If you have enable background fetch mode. Remove this option if you are getting this alert during run app in simulator.

Answer 13

I had the same problem.
It happens as follow...
I had a folder storing images in some sub-folders.
If I add the root image folder as "directory", I receive this error.
If I add the root image folder as "group", simulator runs fine.
weird...

Answer 14

It happens to be related to folder name as well. My image folder was originally named "contents" and I got the error described.
Changed the folder name to "image_files" and reimport it to Xcode project as "folder". It works!
This is totally random...

Answer 15

That did it for me, too:
This happens to me when i switch from
testing on the device to testing on
simulator. Restarting Xcode and
simulator gets rid of this error for
me.Silly.

Answer 16

When a home directory mounted in NFS you have the problem with the simulator.
To get rid of it, you need to to create a couple of directories in some local place where you have permissions to write, "iPhone Simulator" and "Interface builder". Then remove "~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator" and "~/Library/Application Support/Interface Builder 3.0". And finally create symlinks at the exact places of the removed directories pointing to the local directories.

Answer 17

For mine, I got the error when I tried to change the App bundle ID setting in my info.plist file for the sake of running a test. Changing it back cured the problem, but didn't do me any good for the test. Thankfully, the app had loaded in the simulator and I ran it manually for my test.
As far as I can tell, the problem stemmed from having a bundle ID that matched both a specific ID and a wild-card ID. The App IDs I've tried that match only a specific ID/Profile haven't shown a problem.

Answer 18

Check your console and you will get a better idea of what the error might be. That error number is pretty generic. In my case I had an error in my Plist file. I chenged something that I shouldn't have. But I realized this was the problem because the console had a more detailed error message:
2010-09-13 23:30:27.149 Appname[5580:207] *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Could not load NIB in bundle:
... and it goes on.

Answer 19

I have had this problem frequently, and generally just quitting and restarting Xcode works.
However, I just had this problem again and nothing seemed to fix it - quitting the sim, Xcode, rebooting… What was strange was some targets worked (I have multiplied build targets for this project), and other projects worked. But one target failed to launch no matter what I did.
In the end, I found the problem: In the target's properties the executable name $[EXECUTABLE_NAME] got accidentally deleted ! Replace it, and it works.
Worth remembering…

Answer 20

I got same error. This is how i solved it. Hope this helps.
To show all hidden files type below from command line
$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE; killall Finder
Access DerivedData folder and delete it's content(under DerivedData). Basically this is Simulator Cache which sometimes does not get deleted from XCode. Library is a hidden folder
and that is why we run Step 1.
/Users/your username/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData

Answer 21

Quit and re-open simulator , it will work i also got an issue like this and this helped me.

Answer 22

I am facing the exact same issue very frequently, what I do is
1) I quit the iphone simulator
2) and if after following step 1, if issue still the same, then reset the simulator
And it has resolved my issue all the time from step 1 itself.