Last week I wrote a general intro to AQEMU, the Qt front-end I maintain for QEMU on Windows and Linux. This week is narrower: what happened when I pointed it at iOS on real Snapdragon hardware.
The short version
iOS 14 now boots inside AQEMU on Windows 11 on Arm, gets past the lock screen to the full home screen, and touch input works. As far as I know this may be the first time iOS has booted on Windows on Arm, though I'd be happy to be corrected.
How it works
AQEMU doesn't emulate iPhones itself. The heavy lifting is done by Inferno, ChefKiss's Apple Silicon device emulator, which is a fork of QEMU. AQEMU treats it like any other QEMU binary: it builds the command line, manages the VM file, and gives you a window to drive the guest.
A few things specific to the iOS profile:
- No hardware acceleration. Inferno doesn't support WHPX, so the guest runs on QEMU's TCG software translation. On a modern Snapdragon it's still surprisingly quick.
- Phone buttons in the toolbar. A phone has no keyboard shortcuts for Home or Side, so the VM window gets Vol-, Vol+, Home, Side and SOS buttons (you can see them across the top of the screenshot).
- Touch works. Taps and swipes reach the guest, which is what gets you past the lock screen.
You need to supply your own legally obtained firmware and files. AQEMU doesn't ship any Apple software, and I'm not going to link to any.
Why Windows on Arm matters here
Most QEMU front-ends treat Windows on Arm as an afterthought. AQEMU ships native x64 and ARM64 builds, and on Linux it uses KVM. The 1.6.0 release that went live on the Microsoft Store this week added ARM64 WHPX, file copy and crash reporting, so normal ARM64 guests get proper acceleration while special cases like Inferno fall back to TCG.
Having a real Arm laptop to test on has made a big difference. A lot of the Windows on Arm fixes over the last few weeks came straight from running things on the device rather than guessing.
What's next
- A community wiki on GitHub with install guides for each guest, including the trickier ones like iOS.
- A serial monitor for guest and firmware logs is coming too.
Try it
AQEMU is GPL-2.0 and the source is on GitHub: chronic8000/aqemu. It comes with 230+ guest OS profiles, from DOS and retro machines through to RISC-V and PowerPC.
If you'd rather not build it yourself with MSYS2, there's a signed build on the Microsoft Store with a 7-day free trial.
What would you try booting first? Issues and ideas are welcome on GitHub.
