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Rockbox simulator binaries for MacOS (ARM64)

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chris_s:
iPod4g, iPod video, and Fiio M3k simulator

Date: 2025-01-14
Build: d8d6415505

Download

App has not been signed. Expect to see a warning message when trying to launch it for the first time!
See Apple's instructions on how to get past this.



If you encounter something unexpected, or would like to see other targets included in the app bundle, feel free to provide feedback.

Press Tab key to show/hide the background, or press F1 for help.
Pressing 0, 1, 2 or 3 adjusts zoom from 50 to 300%. Pressing 4 switches the scale quality from best (linear) to nearest pixel sampling.

At the bottom of this post, you can find instructions on how to compile a target yourself.
Hosted (i.e. Linux-based) targets – even their simulators – currently need Linux to compile.



Known issues

* After waking your Mac from sleep, playback in the Simulator may not resume.  Quit and relaunch the app as a workaround

* The Lua-based boomshine plugin ignores all input and will require force-quitting the simulator.Notes

* Simulator binaries and supporting files are wrapped in a self-contained bundle, whose main executable (rbsim) is not part of the official Rockbox code repository. It is a short custom shell script that can be read in any text editor to see what it's doing.


* The simdisk (for an iPod video) is located at ~/Library/Application Support/Rockbox Simulator/ipodvideo

A .rockbox folder containing system files for the selected target will be automatically copied there during app launch, unless files of the expected version already exists in the destination (files will be updated as necessary). Any themes that you may want to download and other changes to the installation go in that location as well.

Don't directly modify the contents of Rockbox Simulator.app instead!


* Command line output will not be visible if you're launching the app normally.
In case you do want to see it:

- Open the app bundle as a folder by right-clicking it and selecting Show Package Content.
- Drag the icon for the executable file rbsim in the subfolder Contents/MacOS to a new Terminal window
- Press Enter (with the Terminal window in the foreground) after, optionally, appending a target name to the command, separated from it with a space, such as ipodvideo, fiiom3k or ipod4g. Otherwise, the last-used will be picked or you'll be presented with a list of choices.


* To navigate the iPod simulator using a keyboard without a numpad, :

- MENU: Backspace or Escape
- PLAY: Spacebar
- SELECT: Enter
- UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT: Cursor keys, as usual
- SELECT + PLAY: Space Bar + Enter, or F6 (used for WPS and File Browser Shortcut)

When holding down the function key, a Mac's media keys (F7,F8,F9) can alternatively be used for LEFT/PLAY/RIGHT while the app is in the foreground.

NB: I would recommend Bilgus's keyremap plugin if you prefer an experience closer to the original iPod's firmware where MENU instead of LEFT can be used to go up a menu level, which I find a lot more intuitive.

You can disable the background for all simulators by executing this command in Terminal (replace true with false to undo):

--- Code: ---defaults write org.rockbox.sim nobackground true
--- End code ---

When executing rbsim from the command line, parameters accepted by each one of the target binaries can be passed through to them:

--- Code: ---/path/to/rbsim ipodvideo --nobackground --debugwps --zoom 2
--- End code ---

Don't forget to include the name of a target as the parameter provided to rbsim in your command, such as ipodvideo before appending any other parameters.
To see a list of available parameters, execute
--- Code: ---/path/to/rbsim ipodvideo --help
--- End code ---

When launching the app, you're presented with a choice of simulators.  To prevent this list from showing and instead always open the last-used simulator, execute the following command in Terminal (replace true with false to undo):

--- Code: ---defaults write org.rockbox.sim skiplist true
--- End code ---




To compile a simulator yourself, follow these steps on macOS Sequoia 15.2

1) Install the package manager Homebrew and add it to your PATH (by following the provided instructions)

2) Install packages for sdl2 and the latest gcc by executing the following command

--- Code: ---brew install sdl2 gcc
--- End code ---

3) Check out the source code for Rockbox and prepare a sim folder for the Simulator

--- Code: ---git clone git://git.rockbox.org/rockbox
cd rockbox
mkdir sim
cd sim
--- End code ---

4) Run the configure script, enter a number for some target from the displayed list (such as 22 for iPod video), then press Enter, 's' and Enter again

--- Code: ---../tools/configure
--- End code ---

5) Build, install, and launch the simulator

--- Code: ---make -j10 && make fullinstall && ./rockboxui
--- End code ---

Done!

rockbox_dev123:
Thank you very much for providing this.

I had previously tried to compile the simulator on my 13" M1 2020 and given up.

This should make any upcoming theming work much easier!

chris_s:
Good to hear there's other people interested in this. :)

A new, SDL2-based, version is now available for testing, by the way – the post above has been updated.

chris_s:
Uploaded version 1.2, see changelog above.

Darthagnon:
Anyone wondering whether there are Windows builds available, there are some outdated binaries available here: http://rasher.dk/rockbox/simulator/

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