Is there a way to simulate or preview Square POS behavior without using a physical device?

[carolineharper]

Hi everyone,

I’m working on setting up and testing Square POS workflows and was wondering how others handle testing without relying on a physical device every time.

For web-based dashboards, it’s easy to validate changes quickly, but for POS-specific behavior (items, categories, printer routing, order flow), it seems like everything needs to be tested directly on a phone or tablet.

Is there any supported way to:

• Simulate or preview Square POS behavior on a desktop

• Use an emulator or sandbox-style setup for testing items and order flows

• Validate changes safely before deploying them to live devices

I’m mainly looking to reduce iteration time during setup and avoid constant on-device testing for small changes.

Would appreciate hearing how others approach this or what Square officially recommends.

Thanks in advance.

[mahadansari]

Hi Caroline,

This is a pretty common pain point when working with Square POS. As far as I know, Square doesn’t officially support a full desktop simulator for POS-specific behavior, so a lot of validation still ends up happening on real devices.

To give a more useful answer, could you share a concrete example of what you’re trying to test? For instance:

• What part of the POS flow is causing trouble (items, categories, modifiers, printer routing, checkout flow, etc.)

• At what stage the issue shows up during setup or testing

• Whether you’re testing on iOS or Android

With a specific scenario, it’s easier to suggest practical workarounds or explain how others usually test these changes with minimal on-device iteration.

[carolineharper · Accepted solution]

Hi, thanks for the response.

To clarify a bit more:

1. I’m mainly trying to preview and validate checkout flow, item/category setup, modifiers, and printer routing before pushing changes live.

2. This is mostly during setup and small iterative changes, not full production testing.

3. I’m working primarily with Android devices, but the goal is to reduce repeated physical-device testing as much as possible.

4. I understand there’s no full emulator. I’m mainly looking for practical workflows or workarounds teams use to minimize device dependency, for example, using the Square Dashboard + limited on-device validation.

I’ve been documenting my setup and testing flow here as well, in case it helps with context:
👉 https://aetherrsx2.com/aethersx2-ios/    square-pos-testing-workflow 

Would appreciate any insight into how others approach this efficiently, especially in real-world deployments.