You may have noticed that the iPhone time on Apple presentations is always 9:41. How come? This goes back to when Steve Jobs launched the iPhone in 2007. At the time the time displayed was 9:42 and it was subsequently used for all promotional screenshots until the iPad was launched when the time was changed to 9:41.
Having a static time for all screenshots is good as it makes it easier to produce screenshots for presentations at different times and be able to combine them without the time jumping around. In addition it is also a nice historic reminder of the launch of the iPhone.
This is all very well, but how do you go about producing screenshots that mimic this behaviour. One option is to connect the iPhone to a Mac via USB and then run QuickTimePlayer on the Mac and start a recording. This will force the time displayed on the iPhone to 9:41, blank out any operator name and change the signal strength to maximum.
This works fine but requires a physical device. This can be tricky when submitting apps to the App Store and you have to provide screenshots for all various screen sizes. Another alternative is to download SimulatorStatusMagic, a free Xcode project on GitHub, compile it and install it in the various Xcode iPhone simulators.
Running the app in the simulator shows a GUI that allows the user to set the time, or use the default 9:41 time. Then switch to any other app in the simulator and take whatever screenshots are required.
