While iOS apps are distributed via .ipa (iOS App Store Package) and macOS apps often live inside .dmg (Disk Image) files, converting between them isn’t a simple “rename the extension” process. However, with a few terminal commands and a basic understanding of macOS app bundles, you can package an iOS app for direct installation on a Mac.
If you’ve ever built an iOS app that also runs on Apple Silicon Macs (or you’re dealing with legacy enterprise deployments), you might have asked: “How do I turn my .ipa file into a .dmg?”
chmod +x ipa2dmg.sh ./ipa2dmg.sh YourApp.ipa Converting an IPA to a DMG is straightforward once you understand that an IPA is just a zip containing a .app bundle . The real challenge isn’t the conversion – it’s whether the iOS app will behave well on macOS. ipa to dmg
mkdir ~/Desktop/IPAtoDMG cd ~/Desktop/IPAtoDMG unzip YourApp.ipa -d extracted Now look inside extracted/Payload/ . You should see YourApp.app – that’s the actual application bundle. If the app has never been launched on this Mac, macOS might quarantine it. Remove the quarantine attribute:
#!/bin/bash IPA="$1" NAME=$(basename "$IPA" .ipa) TEMP_DIR=$(mktemp -d) unzip -q "$IPA" -d "$TEMP_DIR" APP_PATH=$(find "$TEMP_DIR" -name "*.app" -type d) xattr -cr "$APP_PATH" hdiutil create -volname "$NAME" -srcfolder "$APP_PATH" -ov -format UDZO "$NAME.dmg" rm -rf "$TEMP_DIR" echo "✅ Created $NAME.dmg" Run it: While iOS apps are distributed via
October 10, 2023 | Reading time: 4 minutes
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine extracted/Payload/YourApp.app Also, for better compatibility, clear any extended attributes: The real challenge isn’t the conversion – it’s
From IPA to DMG: A Developer’s Guide to Packaging iOS Apps for macOS