Apparency for Mac
Check what's inside an app.
Free
In English
Version 3.2When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission
Apparency overview
Apparency - the app that opens apps.
macOS checks every app against a slew of security features: Gatekeeper, notarization, hardening, entitlements and more. But it doesn't show you the result of these checks, preferring to keep these behind the scenes — either the app opens or it doesn't, perhaps with an “app downloaded from the internet” dialog first.
Use Apparency for:
- Examining the App Structure
- Getting Information About a Component
- General Information
- Document Types and Other Info.plist Properties
- Code Signature, Sandbox and Gatekeeper Info
- Getting Details About a Component
- Show the Code Signature
- Show the Info Property List
- Show the Entitlements
- Show Executable Information
- Show App Store Receipt
- Show Provisioning Profile
- Examining Components in Other Apps
- Finding App Containers
- Finding Shared App Group Containers
- Using From Quick Look
What’s new in version 3.2
- Added an indication in the info pane where a component name differs from the file name on disk (aside from the usual hiding of the app extension). This scenario was always possible, but became more common with the “Creator Studio” apps: for example, the new version of Pages appears to be named “Pages” in the Finder, but the name on disk is “Pages Creator Studio,” as you can see in Terminal or in Finder's Get Info window. (This is presumably so the two versions can coexist.) In this scenario, Apparency still shows the same Name as Finder, but you can click the adjacent info button to see the name on disk. Also, when Apparency generates a Quick Look Preview for such an app, it will show both names there.
- Fixed some bugs in how merged entitlements were handled, which could've resulted in Component > Show Entitlements showing incorrect entitlement values, or possibly File > Show Entitlements for All Executables being incorrect. This was most likely to occur on entitlements with dictionary values, like com.apple.security.scripting-targets, or those with a mixture of value types, like com.apple.private.remindd.
- Improved the Receipt inspector — Component > Show App Store Receipt — to match modern receipt verification guidelines, and to show a bit more information about how the receipt was validated (or not).
- Added a new rule for Edit > Search Components: absolute path finds components based on specific text within their paths, which can be useful to match components in certain standardized locations.
- Improved the discovery of app extensions to find those under Contents/Extensions (which are usually ExtensionKit-based components), in addition to those under Contents/PlugIns (which are usually the older Foundation app extensions).
- Improved the Kind Detail shown for app extensions to include more ExtensionKit types, such as “App Intents Extension” and “File System Extension.” Also, for any component where the extension point identifier is not known to Apparency, you'll now see the identifier itself in the Kind Detail, instead of just a missing value. This avoids having to dig the identifier out of the Info.plist inspector.
- Fixed a bug where the File > Show in App Store command was not enabled after opening a folder and selecting an App Store app therein.
- Fixed some Tahoe-induced display bugs in the Entitlements inspectors.
Apparency for Mac
Free
In English
Version 3.2
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