Accessing the contents of iOS Apps

News,

It’s quite straightforward to get to the contents of any app, this is how you do it on a Mac:

  • sync your device to your PC, make sure the relevant box is ticked in iTunes to sync your apps
  • in the Finder go to <home>/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications and select the .ipa file for your app
  • change the .ipa extension to .zip and unzip the file
  • within the contents, go to Payload/YourApp.app
  • right click on the .app file and choose “Show Package Contents”

You can often find some interesting things.

2 thoughts on “Accessing the contents of iOS Apps”

  1. I’ll probably find the answer soon enough, but I’ll ask a question for others who will be searching.

    How can one UNDERSTAND the contents of an .ipa file, once unzipped? In particular, I downloaded a movie, and I’m looking for the subtitles file.

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