Device Name and Clock
The guest takes its device name from the VM and its clock and time zone from your Mac. Read this page when a name or time in the guest is not what you expect.
Device name
To change the name the guest shows, rename the VM:
The guest shows the VM's name as its device name, in Xcode's device list and in xcrun devicectl list devices.
- You cannot rename the device from inside the guest, or from Finder, Xcode or
idevicename. A rename there reports success and changes nothing. - After
vm rename, Finder andideviceinfoshow the new name as soon as the machine is up. Xcode anddevicectlread the name when the device appears and may show the old name until the following boot. - A VM name of more than 255 UTF-8 bytes, or with a control character, is not used; the guest then shows its own name.
vphone-vm hands the name to the guest each time it connects to vphoned, a few seconds into every boot, and the guest keeps it for the next boot. The guest's own name stays in its preferences, untouched.
An existing machine moved to a bundle with this feature receives the guest library with its environment update and uses it from the boot after that.
For the implementation, see Research/Guest/device_name_pinning.md.
Clock and time zone
The guest follows the Mac's time zone and clock. You do not need to set anything.
vphone-vm sends the Mac's time zone each time it connects to vphoned, and the Mac's time then and every minute after. A guest that was off for a day, or sat under a sleeping Mac, is back on the Mac's time within a minute without reaching an NTP server. A guest within a second of the Mac is left alone.
To give the guest a different date or time:
- In the guest, open Settings > General > Date & Time.
- Pick the date or time. This turns the guest's automatic time off, and the Mac's time is no longer applied.
To go back to the Mac's time, turn Set Automatically on again there.