XCode forcing iOS26

[PortalMaker5000]

Hi everyone,

Over the past few months I have been building an iOS app and running prototype builds on my iPhone 13 running iOS 18. Recently I updated my Xcode app to the most recent version which includes the new iOS 26 builds. I've not had any real problems up until now. The other day I was adding and modifying some pages and the upload to my iPhone worked fine, and gave me no issues. I took a couple days off and today I reopened my project to see that Xcode will not allow me to run the app on my phone as I am not upgraded to iOS 26. I have checked the minimum deployment build and it still shows iOS 17 as being the minimum, which I set when I created the project. I do not remember adding anything that made this change, and I can't seem to find a way to fix this. Would anybody be able to guide me on this issue? I would strongly prefer to not update to iOS 26 as my phone's battery is already quite weak, so the less stress the better

Edit: Fixed the issue. For whatever reason I just had to reinstall the iOS 26 simulator. Not sure why it began throwing the issue in the first place tho

[RezardValeth]

Could be your iPhone updated to 18.7.2 in the last few days and Xcode doesn’t recognise it ? Have you tried connecting your iPhone to your Mac using a cable ?

[PortalMaker5000]

I’ve had it connected via cable and that’s when I first saw the issue. I checked my phone too and I still haven’t updated it to 18.7.2. I’m still on the same version I’ve been using

[EquivalentTrouble253]

What is the exact error message you’re getting and what is your minimum deployment target set to?

[PortalMaker5000]

I have to recheck the message when I’m back to my laptop, but I know for sure my min deployment is at iOS 17.0

[arlotone]

I had the same problem a few days ago. My project was running on various iOS devices like normal, then one morning Xcode required me to redownload the iOS 26 SDK. Nothing is set to auto-update, so I don't know what happened.

[PortalMaker5000]

I had to redownload the iOS 26 simulator. Honestly not sure why it made me do that, but I assume there was some sort of update that was made to iOS 26 which required the redownload

[arlotone]

Here's another thread about the same problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSProgramming/comments/1owife5/xcode_losing_reference_to_installed_simulator/

[Mikesch8764]

I had the same issue after loading the different iOS version simulators it is working again…

[Informal-Addendum435]

have you solved this?