IPA Decompiler Online

What You Get Back

• headers/ — one Objective-C header per class, protocol and category, reconstructed from the binary's runtime metadata.
• swift/ — a demangled listing of the app's Swift types, fields and method signatures.
• app/ — the complete app bundle: nibs, compiled storyboards, Assets.car, localisations, embedded frameworks and app extensions.
• info/Info.plist.json — the binary property list converted to readable JSON: bundle identifier, version, URL schemes, ATS configuration, required capabilities.
• info/entitlements.plist — the entitlements the app was signed for, read out of its code signature.
• info/macho.txt — every architecture slice, its load commands, the libraries it links and whether it is encrypted.
• info/frameworks.txt — embedded frameworks, app extensions and companion watch apps.

Objective-C vs Swift — What Is Actually Recoverable

Objective-C recovers well. The Objective-C runtime resolves classes and selectors while the app is running, so the binary has to carry the full description of every class: its name, superclass, protocols, instance variables, properties and the type encoding of every method. A class dump reads that metadata back and writes out header files close to the ones the developer wrote.

Swift recovers partially. Swift resolves most calls at compile time, so there is no equivalent runtime table. What is left is type metadata and mangled symbol names, which demangle into type declarations, stored properties and method signatures. You get the shape of the code, not its interface documentation.

Method bodies are not recovered in either language. They are compiled ARM64 machine code. Reading them means disassembly, which is a different job from a class dump — but the headers tell you what to disassemble and where.

Everything outside the binary recovers completely. The Info.plist, entitlements, URL schemes, App Transport Security exceptions, the frameworks and SDKs the app links, its asset catalogue and its interface files are all plain data, and are often the reason for opening an app in the first place.

App Store Binaries Are Encrypted

This is the one limit worth understanding before you upload. Apple applies FairPlay encryption to every binary distributed through the App Store: the executable's code is encrypted, and the key belongs to the device that downloaded it, not to the file. The Mach-O header records this in LC_ENCRYPTION_INFO as cryptid = 1.

Decrypting it means dumping the app's memory while it runs on a jailbroken device. That is out of scope here and is not attempted. The flag is read and reported instead, because a class dump of encrypted bytes does not fail — it quietly returns a handful of meaningless classes, which is far worse than being told why.

Binaries that are not encrypted, and analyse completely:

• developer and simulator builds straight out of Xcode;
• ad-hoc, enterprise and TestFlight-style distributions;
• the "decrypted IPA" files circulated for older apps;
• your own app, exported from an archive.

Either way the app/ and info/ output is produced, so an encrypted upload is never a wasted one.

Bare Mach-O Uploads

You do not need the whole archive. The app executable on its own, a .dylib, or a framework binary pulled out of Frameworks/ is recognised from its header rather than its name — which matters, because an iOS app's executable has no extension at all.

Universal ("fat") binaries hold several architectures in one file. The arm64 slice is the one analysed, since that is what every current device runs; the others are still described in info/macho.txt.

Limits

• No source code. A class dump reconstructs interfaces, not implementations. Nothing here turns compiled ARM64 back into Objective-C or Swift statements.
• Encrypted App Store binaries stop at the bundle. See above.
• Stripped Swift binaries give less. An app built with heavy optimisation and stripped symbols keeps its type metadata but loses much of the naming around it.
• Assets.car is not expanded. The compiled asset catalogue is returned as it ships.
• Embedded frameworks are listed, not dumped. Upload one on its own for a class dump of it.

Frequently Asked Questions