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Building

We typically develop against the latest stable version of Xcode.

As of this writing, that's Xcode 16.2

1. Clone

Clone the repo to a working directory:

git clone https://github.com/session-foundation/session-ios.git

Recommendation:

We recommend you fork the repo on GitHub, then clone your fork:

git clone https://github.com/<USERNAME>/session-ios.git

You can then add the Session repo to sync with upstream changes:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/session-foundation/session-ios

2. Xcode

Open the Session.xcodeproj in Xcode.

open Session.xcodeproj

In the TARGETS area of the General tab, change the Team dropdown to your own. You will need to do that for all the listed targets, e.g. Session, SessionShareExtension, and SessionNotificationServiceExtension. You will need an Apple Developer account for this.

On the Capabilities tab, turn off Push Notifications and Data Protection, while keeping Background Modes on. The App Groups capability will need to remain on in order to access the shared data storage.

Build and Run and you are ready to go!

Other

Building libSession from source

The iOS project has a shared C++ library called libSession which is included via Swift Package Manager, it also supports building libSession from source (which can be cloned from https://github.com/session-foundation/libsession-util) by using the Session_CompileLibSession scheme and updating the LIB_SESSION_SOURCE_DIR build setting to point at the libSession source directory (currently it's set to ${SOURCE_DIR}/../LibSession-Util)

In order for this to compile the following dependencies need to be installed:

  • cmake
  • m4
  • pkg-config

These can be installed with Homebrew via brew install cmake m4 pkg-config

Additionally xcode-select needs to be setup correctly (depending on the order of installation it can point to the wrong directory and result in a build error similar to tool '{name}' requires Xcode, but active developer directory '/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools' is a command line tools instance), this can be setup correctly by running:

sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

Known issues

Third-party Installation

The database for the app is stored within an App Group directory which is based on the app identifier, we have a script Build Phase which attempts to extract this and include it in the Info.plist for the project so we can access it at runtime (to reduce the manual handling other devs need to do) but if for some reason it's not working the fallback value can be updated within the UserDefaults.applicationGroup variable in SessionUtilitiesKit/Types/UserDefaultsType to match the value set for your project (You may also need to create the App Group on your Apple Developer account).

Push Notifications

Features related to push notifications are known to be not working for third-party contributors since Apple's Push Notification service pushes will only work with the Session production code signing certificate.

Building the app for the Appium regression suite

End-to-end UI regression tests live in the session-appium repo (checked out alongside this one as Session_Appium), which drives a built Session.app through Appium. Harness setup, .env config, simulator creation, and the run commands are documented there (Session_Appium/CLAUDE.md) — that's the source of truth for running the suite. The only iOS-repo responsibility is producing the .app it installs:

  • Build a simulator .app (not a device build). A Debug build is recommended because the launch-arg test instrumentation used by the suite is compiled only under #if targetEnvironment(simulator) and surfaced via DeveloperSettingsViewModel.processUnitTestEnvVariablesIfNeeded.

    xcodebuild build -project Session.xcodeproj -scheme Session \
  -configuration Debug -destination 'generic/platform=iOS Simulator' \
  -derivedDataPath build
# → build/Build/Products/Debug-iphonesimulator/Session.app

  • Point the suite's IOS_APP_PATH_PREFIX at that .app. Using -derivedDataPath (above) keeps the path stable across rebuilds, so you only set it once. After a code change, rebuild and re-run the suite — no .env change needed.