iOS provider (-p ios) not working on macOS - falls back to Chromium

[tyler-jewell]

Description

The iOS provider introduced in v0.9.0 does not actually use iOS Safari via Appium. Commands fall back to Chromium/Playwright.

Environment

• agent-browser: 0.9.0
• macOS: Darwin 25.2.0 (macOS 16.2)
• Xcode: 26.2
• Appium: 3.2.0
• XCUITest driver: 10.19.1
• iOS Simulator: iPhone 17 Pro (iOS 26.1)

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Appium and XCUITest driver:

   npm install -g appium
   appium driver install xcuitest

2. Build WebDriverAgent for simulator:

   cd ~/.appium/node_modules/appium-xcuitest-driver/node_modules/appium-webdriveragent
   xcodebuild build-for-testing -project WebDriverAgent.xcodeproj -scheme WebDriverAgentRunner -sdk iphonesimulator -derivedDataPath ./DerivedData CODE_SIGN_IDENTITY="" CODE_SIGNING_REQUIRED=NO CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

3. Boot simulator and run:

   xcrun simctl boot "iPhone 17 Pro"
   agent-browser -p ios --device "iPhone 17 Pro" open http://example.com
   agent-browser -p ios eval "navigator.userAgent"

Expected Behavior

• Safari should open on iOS Simulator
• User agent should show Mobile Safari, e.g.:
  Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 26_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/...

Actual Behavior

• Returns immediately (no WDA startup delay)
• User agent shows HeadlessChrome:
  Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) HeadlessChrome/145.0.7632.6 Safari/537.36
• No Appium sessions created (verified via curl http://localhost:4723/sessions)
• Appium is running but not being used

Additional Context

Also seeing intermittent daemon issues:

Failed to read: Resource temporarily unavailable (os error 35) (after 5 retries - daemon may be busy or unresponsive)

This may be related to #322.

Analysis

Looking at ios-manager.ts, it appears the IOSManager should connect via webdriverio to Appium, but the provider selection logic in the daemon may not be activating it correctly.

[sid200727]

Hi,
I’d like to take a look at this.
From the analysis, it seems the ios provider is not actually activating the Appium/WebDriverAgent flow and is instead falling back to the Chromium/Playwright provider.

To start, I’ll:
• Review ios-manager.ts and the provider selection logic in the daemon
• Verify whether the -p ios flag correctly switches execution paths
• Add logging to confirm whether the Appium driver initialization is being attempted

I’ll report back with findings before proposing a fix.

Let me know if there’s any additional context I should be aware of.