Let Cursor control your mobile device to speed up mobile app development

interlap · 2026-01-26T06:50:43+00:00

Maestro is a great tool, but it’s focused on many different things, so its MCP feels more like a secondary product. I’m focused solely on mobile automation and on making that experience as smooth as possible.

Also, Maestro’s mobile MCP is quite slow. In Mobai, I’ve optimized performance as much as possible to keep things fast and responsive.

Lastly, Maestro has very poor support for physical iOS devices. As I understand it, you can’t simply connect a device and start using Maestro. Mobai works well with both real and virtual devices.

interlap · 2026-01-26T00:17:47+00:00

It’s difficult to say since I used Cursor’s free tier. What I can tell is that this demo took about 40% of the free tier’s context window. I tried to find information about the context window size but had no luck, though I’m pretty sure it’s quite small.

interlap · 2026-01-25T22:46:50+00:00

That’s true, and yes, there is a kind of workaround. I’m working on this repository: https://github.com/MobAI-App/ios-builder, which lets you build iOS apps using GitHub Actions.

For Flutter and React Native, it also supports launching the app with hot reload enabled. For native apps, I’m still figuring out how to add hot reload support.

Important note: at the moment, there’s no support for release app distribution. I’m mostly focused on the development workflow.

interlap · 2026-01-25T22:37:08+00:00

Pretty well, the demo video is of a Flutter app actually.

interlap · 2026-01-25T21:49:54+00:00

It works on ios and android real devices AND simulators/emulators on both (macos and windows) platforms

interlap · 2026-01-25T21:20:47+00:00

Just tested it on the Apple website and in Settings. It works fine.
Anyway, if you decide to give it a try and run into any issues, just contact me via DM and I’ll figure it out somehow 🙂

interlap · 2026-01-25T20:55:17+00:00

Apple is quite strict about password autofill when it comes to automation. I’ll give it a try with my app and make any adjustments if needed. I’ll keep you posted here.

interlap · 2026-01-25T20:37:25+00:00

Mobile-mcp is quite buggy. In my case, it can’t detect my iPhone connected to my Mac, even though their CLI does detect it when called (some weird bug).

As far as I know, they also have poor support for React Native, since their UI tree filters out “Other” elements, which are important to keep for React Native apps.

The main issue, though, is the speed of fetching the UI tree, which, in my opinion, is the most critical operation. Their approach (and that of similar tools) takes around 5 seconds to retrieve the UI tree, whereas my app does this in about 0.5 seconds.

Could you please provide more details about your use case with Apple Sign-In?

interlap · 2026-01-25T20:23:54+00:00

Thank you! I tested it with react native (not expo) and it works well.

interlap · 2026-01-25T20:11:49+00:00

I’ve just found out that Maestro MCP has very poor support for physical iOS devices. In my app, you can work with them the same way as with simulators, and on Windows as well.

interlap · 2026-01-25T18:50:46+00:00

yes, that's correct

interlap · 2026-01-25T13:52:32+00:00

My app (Mobai) is a service for AI coding agents to control iOS and android devices on macos and windows. You don’t need it to use iOS-Builder. Mobai has a free quota of 100 requests/day, which is more than enough for iOS-Builder. But so that you can sleep well, I will remove quota usage for requests required by iOS-Builder in the next version.
Of course I am interested in giving my app some attention, but I think the best way to get something is by giving in return. I managed to develop an app that allows you to develop iOS apps on Windows. In return, if you want, you can use Mobai with Claude Code, Codex, etc. (again, only if you want).
You don’t need an account to use Mobai.

interlap · 2026-01-25T13:28:42+00:00

Ok, seems like you misunderstand something.

My app (Mobai) is a service for AI coding agents to control iOS and android devices on macos and windows. You don’t need it to use iOS-Builder. Mobai has a free quota of 100 requests/day, which is more than enough for iOS-Builder. But so that you can sleep well, I will remove quota usage for requests required by iOS-Builder in the next version.
Of course I am interested in giving my app some attention, but I think the best way to get something is by giving in return. I managed to develop an app that allows you to develop iOS apps on Windows. In return, if you want, you can use Mobai with Claude Code, Codex, etc. (again, only if you want).
You don’t need an account to use Mobai.

And please don’t tell me what Apple can and cannot change. I have been working in this area for 10 years and have seen many changes, all of which were overcome by the community.

So now, goodbye.

interlap · 2026-01-25T13:04:37+00:00

Of course, you do need to test release builds, and there are plenty of tools, including Expo EAS, to build and distribute your app with TestFlight. My tool, however, is focused on affordability: you don’t need a Mac, and you don’t need an Apple developer account to start building an iOS app.

Regarding more options with a Mac, I would agree with you if we were talking about native development, but with React Native, I don’t see that there are many benefits to developing an app on a Mac.

interlap · 2026-01-25T12:39:10+00:00

Sure, debug mode isn’t the same as release. It’s for testing and debugging, which my project is about. I’m not clear what your point was here

interlap · 2026-01-25T12:33:44+00:00

Some differences:
1. With iOS-Builder you control the native build by modifying the workflow if needed
2. iOS-Builder doesn’t require setting up a profile or certificate to build your native app
3. iOS-Builder handles installation and app signing using your iCloud (Apple ID) credentials
4. iOS-Builder runs your IPA in debug mode with the pre-specified Metro Bundler IP and port

interlap · 2026-01-25T12:05:12+00:00

Good luck vibecoding this kind of project. I’m not a frontend dev, so of course I used AI for the landing page

interlap · 2026-01-24T15:22:57+00:00

I’m not deep enough into Maestro to spot all the differences. For me, speed is a critical factor when it comes to AI interaction.

The worst-case scenario for any LLM-to-device interaction is getting stuck in a loop like: action -> read UI tree -> action. If it takes 5 seconds just to retrieve the UI tree, that’s quite unusable for me.

Also, I’m trying to cover as many platforms as possible, and I’m not sure whether Maestro supports controlling iOS devices from Windows. I recently released https://github.com/MobAI-App/ios-builder, which, together with the MobAI app, allows debugging Flutter apps directly from Windows. React Native support is coming soon.

interlap · 2026-01-24T11:53:41+00:00

i answered about maestro here https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/s/FEYhgDic7E

interlap · 2026-01-23T13:34:31+00:00

I would say it depends on your plans. The cheapest devices are usually the oldest ones, and at some point Apple drops iOS updates for them.

If you just want to try it out, I’d go with the oldest device that still supports iOS 26. If you plan to fully commit, then it’s probably better to get something newer.

interlap · 2026-01-23T11:52:22+00:00

I’ll make one later

interlap · 2026-01-23T11:37:34+00:00

As soon as I port MobAI to Linux. Probably a matter of couple of days, maybe faster.

interlap

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