An .ipa file is an

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

and

iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. for its iPad line of tablet computers. It is a rebranded variant of iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones, renamed to reflect the diverging features of the two product ...

application archive file which stores an iOS/iPadOS

app App, Apps or APP may refer to: Computing * Application software * Mobile app, software designed to run on smartphones and other mobile devices * Web application or web app, software designed to run inside a web browser * Adjusted Peak Performa ...

. Each .ipa file includes a binary and can only be installed on an

, or ARM-based macOS device. Files with the .ipa extension can be uncompressed by changing the extension to .zip and unzipping. Most .ipa files cannot be installed on the iPhone Simulator because they do not contain a binary for the

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...

architecture, only one for the

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured ...

of mobile phones and tablets. To run applications on the simulator, original project files which can be opened using the Xcode SDK are required. However, some .ipa files can be opened on the simulator by extracting and copying over the .app file found in the Payload folder. Some simple apps are able to run on the simulator through this method. ipa is a ''de facto'' format used by Apple and there are no specifications of it. A form of

Digital Rights Management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...

exists in the format to control redistribution to a single Apple ID. Prior to iTunes 12.7 (September 2017), users had direct access to ipa files in the form of App Store downloads.

Structure of a .ipa file

An IPA has a built-in structure for

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mu ...

and

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

to recognize. The example below shows the structure of an IPA:

/Payload/
/Payload/Application.app/
/iTunesArtwork
/iTunesArtwork@2x
/iTunesMetadata.plist
/WatchKitSupport/WK
/META-INF

As shown above, the Payload folder is what contains all the app data. The iTunes Artwork file is a 512×512 pixel PNG image, containing the app's icon for showing in

and the App Store app on the

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...

. The iTunesMetadata.plist contains various bits of information, ranging from the developer's name and ID, the bundle identifier, copyright information, genre, the name of the app, release date, purchase date, etc. It is common but undocumented to use a JPEG file for . Since 2017, Apple has used

LZFSE LZFSE (Lempel–Ziv Finite State Entropy) is an open source lossless data compression algorithm created by Apple Inc. It was released with a simpler algorithm called LZVN. Overview The name is an acronym for Lempel–Ziv and finite-state ent ...

instead of registered Zip algorithms in IPAs. The "compression method" field in this case is set to 99. Code signing is handled in the .app bundle directory. The META-INF folder only contains metadata about what program was used to create the IPA.

Unsigned .ipa executables

An unsigned .ipa can be created by copying the folder with the extension .app from the Products folder of the application in Xcode to a folder called Payload and compressing the latter using the command zip -0 -y -r myAppName.ipa Payload/. It is then possible to install unsigned .ipa files on iOS jailbroken devices using third party software. ''AppSync'' is the tool for installing such homebrew apps. Similar to the case of game console hacking, people are known to use this installation for piracy, against the tool developer's wishes: some underground communities form around buying an app and then sharing its DRM-free unsigned version.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ipa Archive formats Filename extensions