lazyios

Like lazygit, but for your iPhone. A keyboard-driven terminal app that talks to an iPhone over USB: read the system log, list and kill processes, launch apps, capture network traffic to a .pcap, throttle the network, take screenshots, fake a location, watch FPS. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, needs no jailbreak, no Xcode and no admin rights. Built on Textual, using pymobiledevice3 as a library.

Who is your iPhone talking to?

See which apps on your iPhone talk to which servers and trackers, live, without a proxy, a VPN profile or a jailbreak.

Press space to start a capture, use your phone, then open the privacy tab: every app gets one row per domain it contacted, with the tracker category and company when the domain is a known tracker, plus flows, bytes and last activity. Export the session as JSON and CSV with e.

How it works: the capture is the phone's own packet stream over USB. Domains come from the DNS answers the phone receives and from the server name in each TLS handshake; both are matched to the app that owns the connection. Tracker data is the AdGuard companiesdb.

iOS has its own App Privacy Report (Settings > Privacy & Security) that logs domains per app after the fact. lazyios adds live per-connection data (bytes, flows, IPs) and an export you can diff, grep or open in a spreadsheet.

Limits, said plainly:

• Apps that use encrypted DNS, iCloud Private Relay, or QUIC without a visible DNS lookup show up as bare IP addresses.
• The capture only sees the phone's own traffic, and only while it is plugged in.
• Names come from unencrypted DNS answers and the TLS server name (SNI) seen on the wire. Neither is authenticated, so treat them as hints. DNS over HTTPS/TLS, Encrypted Client Hello, QUIC and iCloud Private Relay are invisible, and those rows fall back to the bare IP.
• "Tracker" means an ads, analytics or telemetry endpoint according to AdGuard's companiesdb. It is not a verdict on the app.

Tracker data: AdGuard companiesdb, CC BY-SA 4.0, reduced to domain, category and company (see src/lazyios/data/TRACKERS-LICENSE.md).

Features

• overview: device info, battery (level, cycles, charger), developer mode state
• logs: live syslog with level colors, filter, pause, bounded buffer
• processes: list, filter, kill (with confirmation), launch by bundle id
• apps: installed user apps, launch with enter
• network: packet capture to a real .pcap with a live table, open in Wireshark; network, thermal and GPU conditions
• privacy: which app talks to which domain, known trackers flagged, filter, sort, JSON and CSV export
• tools: screenshot, location simulation, FPS sparkline
• --demo runs on fake data, no device needed

Install

Easiest first.

1. Download a binary. Grab lazyios-windows-x64.exe, lazyios-macos-arm64 or lazyios-linux-x64 from the Releases page and run it from a terminal. Nothing else to install (on macOS and Linux run chmod +x first). The Windows exe is not code-signed, so SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC": click More info, then Run anyway. To check the download, compare its hash with the SHA256SUMS file from the same release:

Get-FileHash lazyios-windows-x64.exe -Algorithm SHA256   # PowerShell
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing                  # Linux
shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing              # macOS

2. One-liner. Installs uv if needed, then lazyios. No admin or sudo.

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Manuel-1312/lazyios/main/install.ps1 | iex      # Windows
curl -LsSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Manuel-1312/lazyios/main/install.sh | sh  # macOS, Linux

3. From PyPI.

uv tool install --python 3.12 lazyios
pipx install --python python3.12 lazyios

Use Python 3.12: on newer versions a few pymobiledevice3 dependencies have no prebuilt wheels yet and pip tries to compile them.

Requirements

• An iPhone that trusts this computer. Developer Mode must be on for processes, conditions and tools.
• Windows: the Apple Devices app (winget install 9NP83LWLPZ9K -s msstore) or iTunes, for usbmuxd. If Apple Devices is installed but not running, lazyios starts it for you.
• macOS: nothing extra.
• Linux: the usbmuxd package (sudo apt install usbmuxd or your distro's equivalent).
• Python 3.10+ only for the pip/uv installs.

Usage

lazyios [--udid UDID] [--out DIR] [--demo]
lazyios --version
lazyios --selftest
python -m lazyios

Captures, screenshots and privacy reports go to ~/lazyios/captures, ~/lazyios/screenshots and ~/lazyios/reports unless --out says otherwise.

Troubleshooting

iPhone not detected on Windows. Install Apple Devices from the Microsoft Store (or iTunes), plug the phone in with a data cable and unlock it. If the cable only charges, try another one.

Failed to connect to usbmuxd. usbmuxd is the service that talks to the phone over USB. On Windows open the Apple Devices app once (lazyios also tries to start it); with iTunes, start the "Apple Mobile Device Service" in services.msc. On Linux install the usbmuxd package and replug. macOS has it built in.

"Trust This Computer" prompt. Unlock the phone and tap Trust, then enter your passcode. Press r in lazyios to retry. If the prompt never shows, unplug, replug and unlock first.

Developer Mode missing in Settings. The switch under Settings > Privacy & Security stays hidden until the phone is asked to show it. With the phone plugged in and unlocked, run uvx --python 3.12 pymobiledevice3 amfi reveal-developer-mode, then turn Developer Mode on in Settings and let the phone restart.

iOS 17+ tunnel / no admin. Newer iOS versions need a tunnel for developer services. lazyios builds it inside the process with a userspace network stack, so no root or admin is needed. It opens on first use and takes a few seconds.

Launching an app does nothing. The phone has to be unlocked.

"Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 or greater is required" while installing. pip picked a Python version that some dependencies have no prebuilt wheels for. Install with Python 3.12 (uv tool install --python 3.12 ...) or use the standalone binary.

How it compares

libimobiledevice and idevicesyslog are single-purpose command line tools, and Xcode's Devices window needs a Mac. lazyios puts the common bits (logs, processes, apps, packet capture, network conditions) in one interactive terminal app that runs anywhere Python or the standalone binary does.

Notes

• Capture files and privacy reports contain your traffic metadata (domains, IPs). Treat them as sensitive.
• An active condition is shown in red in the status line. Conditions and simulated location are cleared when you quit.

Credits

pymobiledevice3 by doronz88 and contributors does all the device work. The interface is Textual.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 Manuel Sánchez

GPL-3.0-or-later, see LICENSE.