Apparency

A User Guide

Looking for something specific? The User Guide and FAQ are indexed within the app — open Apparency, click on the Help menu (Command-?), and type in the Search field. Results listed under Help Topics link directly to the appropriate User Guide section or FAQ entry here.

Opening an App in Apparency

There are several ways to open an app using Apparency:

• In Apparency, choose File > Open, locate the app and click Open.
• In the Finder, locate the app and do one of the following:
  • Drag the app icon onto the Apparency icon, either in your Dock or in your Applications folder.
  • Select the app icon and choose Finder > Services > Open With Apparency (under the Development group).
  • Control-click the app icon and choose Open With Apparency, near the bottom of the context menu. (This item might be grouped under Services, depending on how many services are applicable.)
• If the app is in your Dock, control-click on its icon there, and choose Options > Show In Finder. Then continue in the Finder as above.

If you don't see the Open With Apparency item in the Services menu or in the Finder context menu, choose Finder > Services > Services Preferences, go to the Development group, and make sure that Open With Apparency is checked. You can also add a keyboard shortcut here, if you wish, but that's not necessary to make the menu item appear.

Whichever method you choose, Apparency opens a new window, showing the app itself, along with any components inside it:

You can actually open any macOS bundle with Apparency, including an app plug-in or a standalone framework. You can also open a “bare” executable file, such as one found in /usr/local/bin. A bare executable can have many of the same attributes as a bundle, and can even have an embedded Info.plist.

Opening a System Component by Name

If you want to examine a system component — that is, a component that is part of macOS itself — Apparency can make it easier to find and open the right one.

Choose File > Open System Component (Cmd-Control-O), and start typing the name of the component — or some portion thereof. Apparency will show the system components that match this name:

When you select an item in this list, Apparency will open that component. Or you can continue to refine your search text, until the component you want appears in the list.

You can use this mechanism to find and open the following types of system components:

• macOS frameworks, whether in /System/Library/Frameworks or /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks. Apparency will find frameworks whose base name (ignoring the path and .framework extension) contain the entered text. Of course, you could also open these using File > Open, but it takes some navigation to get to the right place.
• macOS dylibs, which might live in /usr/lib, but in almost all cases will have been moved into the DYLD shared cache, which makes using File > Open a non-starter! Apparency will find libraries whose base name (ignoring the path and .dylib extension) contain the entered text. You can include the standard lib prefix or not.
• macOS executables that are started automatically by launchd jobs. Apparency will find launchd jobs whose label (something like com.apple.bluetoothd) contains the entered text, and will show the executables that are referenced by those jobs. This is handy way to find the executable that provides a named service, without having to hunt down the launchd plist and examine the program path therein.

Of course, there are other types of system components, so this mechanism won't work for everything.

Opening a System Library with a String Literal

The Open System Component mechanism can be helpful if you know the name of the component you want. But sometimes all you have is a string — such as from an alert dialog, a message in the Console log, or perhaps a key found via a defaults(1) command. How can you find the responsible macOS system framework or library?

Choose File > Open System Library with String Literal (Shift-Cmd-Control-O). Type (or paste) the string you have, and Apparency will show the system libraries that reference this string:

Here we say system libraries, rather than components, because this mechanism finds only system frameworks and dylibs that have been moved into the DYLD shared cache; it won't search macOS executables or XPC services that still exist fully on-disk.

This mechanism searches for the given string in several sections of the __TEXT segment which are marked as containing C string literals — including __cstring (C string literals, and higher-level string types built upon them), __oslogstring (literal format strings sent to the Unified Logging system), __objc_classname (the names of Objective-C classes), and __objc_methname (the names of Objective-C selectors and properties).

This mechanism also searches for the given string in the list of dynamically linked libraries for each system library — that is, it finds the system frameworks or dylibs that use another library matching the given string. (In Mach-O terms, these are the strings from the LC_LOAD_DYLIB commands.) This can be helpful to find where some code of interest is getting invoked.

For each match, Apparency will show the actual string that it found in that system library (or the first such string, if a single library contains multiple matches). Select a match to open that system library in Apparency, after which you can get more information using Component > Show String Literals from Executable, as described here.

Alternatively, you might want to proceed directly to some sort of disassembly of the library, such as analyzing it using the Hopper Disassembler.

Opening a Component from the Terminal using the “appy” Command-Line Tool

If you're working in the Terminal, you might already know the path of the component you want to examine, and would like to open it directly. You can do this with Apparency's command-line tool, called appy.

The appy tool is delivered inside the Apparency application bundle, but consistent with our philosophy that you should decide when and how to install software on your Mac, the app does not try to install the command line tool for you. Choose Help > About the Command-Line Tool for instructions on adding the appy tool to your path.

The appy command line is straightforward: just give it the (possibly relative) path to the component that you want to open in Apparency:

appy Utilities/Grapher.app

Of course, there are other ways to open a file in a specific app, such as with open(1). But in addition to being more succinct, appy also allows you to open system dylibs that have been moved into the DYLD shared cache, and that don't even exist on disk anymore. So you can do something like this:

appy /usr/lib/libxar.1.dylib

and Apparency will open the library, in spite of there being no actual file at that path!

When opening a cached dylib like this, you must provide the canonical path, which is the one known to the DYLD shared cache. This is often a name with some sort of version number embedded, while the “generic” name was a symbolic link. In the example above, we have to use libxar.1.dylib instead of libxar.dylib, because the latter is only a symbolic link (and not even one that still exists). If you don't know the proper canonical path, try using the Open System Component command to search for the library.

Examining the App Structure

The browser, on the left side of the main Apparency window, shows the basic structure of the app:

At the top of this view is the app itself. Most apps also contain other components inside them — frameworks, plug-ins, app extensions, Spotlight importers and so on. These components are shown underneath the main app, using a hierarchical view similar to the Finder's List view. If any of the components contain sub-components, use the disclosure button to expand these further.

Apparency doesn't show all of the individual files inside the app bundle. The Finder is a better tool for navigating files: control-click the app icon and choose Show Package Contents.

Rather, Apparency shows bundles — and bare executables — that are found in specific places within the app, as defined by macOS. For example, macOS requires app extensions to be placed in Contents/PlugIns, so that is one place that Apparency looks. The point is to show components that add to system functionality (as is the case with app extensions, for example), as well as those that are simply part of the app's internal organization (such as frameworks).

By default, Apparency looks for components only in well-defined places, as defined by macOS, rather than examining every file and folder inside the app (which could become quite slow for large apps). However, this may miss components, which sometimes live in other places, such as the Resources folder. If you want Apparency to try harder to find components, when you select the app in the File > Open dialog, check Look for components in de facto “code places” before clicking Open. If the app is already open in Apparency, use File > Re-open with Options to quickly re-open it.

The columns of the browser show some basic information about the app, and any components:

• The Kind column shows the type of component, akin to what the Finder would show for this bundle (although for certain types, such as app extensions, Apparency tries to provide a more detailed kind).
• The Version columns shows the full version information, such as you'd see in a standard app About window.
• The Signature column gives a summary of the code signature information for the component, which is discussed at much length below.

Click on the Name, Kind or Version column title to re-order the components accordingly. This can be useful for an app with a large number of components.

Getting Information About a Component

The info pane, on the right side of the main Apparency window, shows information about the app or other component that is currently selected in the browser:

General Information

In the top part of the info pane, Apparency shows general information about the app or component:

• Kind is akin to the Kind shown by the Finder. You can click on this text to show the underlying Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) that macOS defines for this kind (e.g. “com.apple.application-bundle”).
• Kind Detail is shown only for certain kinds of component. For example, for an “Application and System Extension,” Apparency shows the specific type of extension, such as “Photo Editing Extension” or “Share Extension.” You can click on this text to show the underlying identifier (e.g. “com.apple.share-services”).
• Executable shows the supported processor architecture, such as Intel — 64-bit or Apple Silicon — 64-bit. If the app is “universal,” multiple architectures are shown. You can click on this text to show the underlying symbolic name used by macOS, such as x86_64 or arm64. You can also get more information about the executable as described below. Note that some components don't have an executable, or (less often) have an interpreted script as their executable, so you may see no value or a specific file kind here.
• Requires shows the oldest version of macOS supported by the component (for any processor architecture), if the component declares this. This information is most meaningful on the top-level app (even though it might still be declared on lower-level components). See more info here.
• Where shows the location of the component. Except for the app itself, the location is given relative to the app or other immediate containing component. If you want to go to that location, you can choose Component > Show Component In Finder (Cmd-Shift-R).
• Downloaded shows when the app was downloaded, if this information is available. You can click on this text once to show the app that did the download (e.g. Safari), and again for the kind of download. Note that download information is not available for apps installed via the Mac App Store or macOS Installer packages, or generally for apps that have updated themselves. Also, see more info here.
• Identifier shows the bundle identifier of the component. This is the name by which macOS knows the app or component, and you'll sometimes see these identifiers used elsewhere, such as in the name of preferences files or in Console logs.
• Version shows the full version information, such as you'd see in a standard app About window: the first number is the “short version” and the one in parentheses is the “bundle version,” which are both significant parts of Apple's standard versioning scheme.
• Copyright shows the copyright information associated with the bundle. If this ends with an ellipsis (…) character, Apparency truncated long copyright text, but you can hold the pointer over it to show the full text.

Most of these attributes can be selected, and thus copied. Unfortunately, this can make the cycling attributes, such as Kind, a bit squirrelly to work with. If you single-click, Apparency will still cycle through the different values. If you double- or triple-click, Apparency will instead enter selection mode, with the appropriate select-word or select-all behavior. If you want to get out of selection mode, so that the attribute values cycle again, press the Escape key. Or click on the label for the attribute, instead of the attribute value: this will always cycle the attribute, regardless of selection state.

Document Types and Services Provided

In the middle part of the info pane, Apparency shows a summary of the definitions and services that the app provides to macOS:

• Document Types tell macOS what kind of files the app can open, such as through the File > Open dialog, or via drag-and-drop. These can include standard types (like text or JPEG files) and/or app-specific types (like a Keynote presentation).
• Uniform Type Identifiers (or UTIs) define new types of files that are not standard to macOS. These typically work together with the Document Types, but are not necessarily the same lists — an app doesn't need to re-define standard types, but it may define types for files that are not documents per se (such as a plug-in or the like).
• URL Schemes tell macOS what kind of URLs the app can handle. Sometimes, these are common URL schemes; for example, an FTP client might declare that it handles ftp: URLs, while Apple Mail handles mailto: URLs. More often, these are new schemes that are custom to the app, and begin with an x- prefix by convention. Custom schemes are typically used for lightweight inter-app linking, such a URL in a purchase receipt e-mail, which when clicked, opens the app and pre-populates the registration dialog.
• Services define new items that the app would like to add to the Services menu in the Finder and/or other apps. Services act on a selected item — such as a file, some text or an image — and do [something] with it, depending on the app. In fact, this is how Apparency adds the Open With Apparency item to the Finder: in this case, the [something] that Apparency does is simply to the open the selected app. Note that services provided by apps can be enabled or disabled, so that you don't wind up with a Services menu cluttered with garbage you never use: open System Settings and go to Keyboard > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services. (Or on macOS 12 or earlier, open System Preferences and go to Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services.)
• Launchd Jobs configure macOS to launch the component as a daemon (which runs as the root user) or an agent (which runs as the current user). These are usually background services that have no visible UI, and that provide functionality even when the app isn't running. In macOS 13 (Ventura), these are called “background items” and are nominally managed via System Settings, under General > Login Items > Allow in the Background.

For each of these, Apparency simply shows how many of each type is found (because it is difficult to summarize the contents in any succinct way). To see more information, click the button in front of the number: this will show either the Info Property List, with the appropriate property selected and expanded, or for launchd jobs, the Launch Information inspector.

Code Signature, Sandbox and Gatekeeper Info

In the lower part of the info pane, Apparency shows the status of the code signature and other security features:

• App Sandbox shows if the app is sandboxed, which is Apple's scheme for limiting the capabilities of an app (something like the restrictions on all apps in iOS). Apps distributed through the Mac App Store are required to use the App Sandbox, but other apps may also do so.
• Hardening shows if additional runtime protections have been enabled. This feature was introduced in macOS 10.14 (Mojave), and is intended to limit the damage that a compromised app can do, by turning off capabilities that it doesn't normally require. Hardening generally covers a different set of capabilities than — and is less restrictive than — the App Sandbox, so an app might use both.
• Notarization shows if the app was submitted to Apple's notarization service, which checks for certain security features (such as hardening) and does some sort of malware scan. If these automated checks pass, Apple grants a notarized status to the app. A description of each possible notarization status is available here — or move the pointer over the status and click the help button that appears.
• Entitlements are assigned to the app when it is signed by the developer. An entitlement is an Apple-defined property that grants some capability to the app, as described below. Click the Show Entitlements button to show these properties.
• Gatekeeper shows how the Gatekeeper feature of macOS would handle the app when you open it after download, at least by default. Gatekeeper checks the code signature and notarization status, among other things, to determine an applicable “policy.” A description of each possible Gatekeeper status is available here — or move the pointer over the status and click the help button that appears. To see the actual Gatekeeper policy rule that matched the app, use the Launch Information inspector.
• Signed By shows the name of the certificate that was used to sign the app. Typically, this is either an Apple certificate — for apps that come with macOS, or that are downloaded from the Mac App Store — or an Apple-issued Developer ID certificate, in which case the name of the developer is shown. Descriptions of possible Signed By identities are available here — or move the pointer over the identity and click the help button that appears.

Note that you can select more than one component in the browser. When you do this, the info pane will show the information that is identical for all of the selected components. This is a quick way to determine if multiple components support the same processor architectures, or have the same code-signing identity, for example. Any attributes that have different values for one or more of the selected components will show Multiple values instead.

Getting Details About a Component

While the info pane gives you a summary of the selected app or component, there are buttons in the toolbar that allow you to see more details. (Some of these are also available through buttons in the info pane itself; use whichever one is more convenient.)

Show the Code Signature

If the selected app or component was signed, click the Signature toolbar button (or use Cmd-Shift-S) to see the actual signing certificate and other details about the verification of the signature (including the applicable Gatekeeper policy, as discussed above).

Click the Show Certificate button to examine the certificate that created the signature, and the entire chain up to the Certificate Authority, which is typically the Apple Root CA. Select an individual certificate in the chain, and click the disclosure arrow next to Details to see more information.

You can also export a certificate by dragging the certificate icon (from the lower pane) and dropping it in the Finder. This will give you a DER-format file that you can open with Certificate Assistant, or manipulate with command-line tools like security(1) or openssl(1).

Show the Info Property List

The information property list — or simply, the Info.plist — contains a number of Apple-defined properties. These tell macOS how the app or component works, what it can do, what icon to show, what documents it can handle, and many other things. Apparency extracts a few interesting bits of the Info.plist to show in its info pane — such as the version information, the bundle identifier, and so on — but you may still want to examine the Info.plist in its entirety.

Click the Property List toolbar button (or use Cmd-Shift-I) to view the Info.plist file for the selected app or component:

Most of the Info.plist keys have some sort of documentation on Apple's Developer site: to jump directly to that documentation, select a row and click Open Apple Documentation for Key. (If this button is disabled, Apparency doesn't have a direct link for that key, either because the key isn't documented or because we didn't find the documentation to index it.) Alternatively, when you move the pointer over a key name, if a link button appears on the right side, clicking this will also take you to the documentation for that property.

If you're looking for a particular key or value, click in the search field (or use Cmd-F) and type the text you want to find. Apparency will show only the rows that match, or for arrays or dictionaries, the rows that contain matches. Click the search options button to choose between searching keys and values, or to restrict the way that text matches. Click the cancel button to return to viewing the unfiltered Info.plist.

Show the Entitlements

The entitlements of an app or component enumerate specific capabilities that the component requires to do its work. macOS grants (or denies) these capabilities to the app or component, based on the entitlements and (sometimes) other restrictions. Entitlements take several forms:

• If the App Sandbox is enabled, macOS denies many capabilities by default (for example, the ability to read or write user files, or to make or receive network connections). The required capabilities are then granted by macOS if the appropriate entitlement is present; for example, setting com.apple.security.network.client to YES allows outgoing network connections. (This ability is limited to the entitlements that are defined by Apple, and for apps distributed through the Mac App Store, they are subject to rejection by App Review.)
• If Hardening is enabled, the scheme is similar: macOS defaults to denying a number of less commonly needed capabilities — especially ones that Apple deems subject to exploitation if the app is compromised. If the app actually requires any of those capabilities to function properly, the appropriate entitlements will cause macOS to grant them. For example, setting com.apple.security.personal-information.location to YES allows the app to request location information.
• Outside of App Sandbox or Hardening, many macOS capabilities and Apple services are available only to apps or components having the appropriate entitlements. For example, the ability to receive push notifications, or the ability to use iCloud services, are controlled by entitlements. (Again, these may be subject to App Review if the app is distributed through the Mac App Store. Outside of the App Store, they may require a provisioning profile as discussed below.)
• A few entitlements relate to the sharing of data between different apps from the same developer. For example, com.apple.security.application-groups establishes shared folders which multiple apps can use to store or exchange data (as described below).
• Finally, there are a vast number of private-to-Apple entitlements, which control access to macOS services that Apple deems as off-limits to third party apps entirely. The ability to access Internet Accounts information, or to talk to the App Store, are two examples, but there are many, and they are undocumented, for obvious reasons. Typically, these entitlements start with a com.apple.private prefix (but some that don't are probably still considered private). Note that macOS typically refuses to grant capabilities for private entitlements unless the app or component was signed by Apple itself.

Click the Entitlements toolbar button (or use Cmd-Shift-E) to view the entitlements for the selected app or component:

As described above for the Info.plist, documentation links to Apple's Developer site are available for some entitlement keys.

Likewise, you can use the search field to filter entitlements on specific key or value text.

If the selected app has a provisioning profile, as discussed below, there will be an additional column that shows whether each entitlement is allowed by the profile. See here for a description of each possible entitlement provisioning status.

Apparency can also show a “merged” view of all entitlements requested by all of the components of an app. This can be helpful to get an overall sense of what the app will do, especially when creating a Privacy Preferences Policy Control (PPPC) Profile. Use File > Show Entitlements for All Executables (Cmd-Control-A) to view the merged entitlements: these are explained further in the FAQ.

Show Executable Information

Apparency can show details about the executable file associated with an app or component. Click the Executable toolbar button (or use Cmd-Shift-X) to view this information for the selected component. (If the button is disabled, the component either doesn't contain an executable — i.e. the component contains resources but no code — or the executable is not a native Mach-O type, which is possible but atypical.)

The information shown for an executable is mostly of the sort you would otherwise need the otool(1) or objdump(1) tools to access:

• The Location shows the path to the executable file, relative to the component itself. Click the adjacent Show in Finder button to reveal the executable.
• The Type shows the Mach-O binary type of the executable, which generally follows from the kind of component — a dynamic library for a framework, a bundle for a plug-in, an executable for an app extension, and so on.
• The Processor Architecture pop-up shows which architectures are supported by the executable. Most executables today support both the Intel — 64-bit and Apple Silicon — 64-bit architectures. Choosing a different architecture from the pop-up will update the rest of the executable information, although you might not notice any change if the displayed information is all identical. Hold down the Option key to show symbolic architecture names (such as x86_64 or arm64) in the pop-up menu. (If there is only one supported architecture, the pop-up button will be disabled, since there's no other choice.)
• The Platform is almost always macOS, but you may occasionally see something different, such as UIKit for Mac (“Catalyst”).
• The Deployment Version shows the earliest supported version of macOS that was specified by the developer when building the executable. This information is generally also encoded in the Info.plist of the component, but not all components have an Info.plist, and this is a more direct record of the configuration specified when the executable was linked. (The deployment version can differ for Catalyst apps, where it tends to track an iOS version rather than a macOS version.)
• Likewise, the SDK Version shows the newest version of macOS from which the executable uses system APIs. That doesn't mean it won't run on newer versions of macOS, just that it doesn't use any APIs that were introduced on newer versions. In practice, this pretty much corresponds to the version of Xcode that was used to build the executable, since Apple no longer provide multiple SDK versions within a single version of Xcode. (Again, this version can differ for Catalyst apps.)
• The Dynamic Library Install Name (applicable only to the Mach-O dynamic library type) shows the internal install path for this library. This is saved at app build time, so that the library can be found again when the app is eventually run. For most dynamic libraries packaged inside of an app, this will start with a special @rpath, @loader_path or @executable_path variable, which locates the library relative to the component that is using it, no matter where the app itself is installed. See the dyld(1) man page for more information about these special variables.
• Dynamically Linked Libraries shows all of the dynamic libraries that are used (directly) by this executable. This is typically a mixture of macOS system libraries and (perhaps) frameworks or dynamic libraries bundled with the app. The Where column shows where each library is expected to be found; this comes from the library's Dynamic Library Install Name (see above), and might use a special dyld variable like @rpath. The libraries are initially sorted by the specified link order, but you can click the column headings to re-order them; sorting on the Where column is a handy way to group system libraries and bundled ones. The last two columns show if any of the libraries are weakly-linked (🔗) or are being re-exported as part of an umbrella framework (☂️).

  If you want to open any of these dynamic libraries in Apparency, you can do so by selecting the library and choosing Open Library in Apparency — or just double-click on the library. This works for any library that is referenced by an absolute path, such as /System/Library/Frameworks or /usr/lib, even if the dylib has been moved into the DYLD shared cache. However, Apparency doesn't know how to resolve @rpath or other dyld variables; such libraries are probably already shown in the current window's component browser, though.

• Runtime Search Paths shows any locations that will be searched to find Dynamically Linked Libraries which have a Where starting with @rpath. In other words, these are the paths that are substituted for @rpath by the linker at runtime, in order to find the library. If these are used, they will generally be relative to one of the other special variables, @loader_path or @executable_path. Again, see the dyld(1) man page for more information.
• DYLD Environment shows any equivalent environment variables that the dynamic linker should assume are set when loading this executable or library. This is unusual, but can be used to influence which Dynamically Linked Libraries are found; for example, Safari sets DYLD_VERSIONED_FRAMEWORK_PATH to find a possibly newer version of WebKit than is used by other apps on the system. The dyld(1) man page documents these environment variables.

Show Launch Information

macOS has various features that control how and when a specific app or component might be launched. For example, Gatekeeper decides if the component can launch; launchd(8) often does the actual launching, based on some trigger or other event; and launch constraints restrict what is allowed to perform or trigger the launch.

Apparency gathers this launch-related information into a single inspector. Select a component and click the Launch toolbar button (or use Cmd-Shift-L).

In this inspector, you'll find the following launch-related information:

• The Code Signing Identity is used by macOS to grant access to sensitive resources — such as keychain items or App Sandbox “containers” — in a way that won't break every time the app is updated. This Boolean expression is a code signing requirement, as explained here.

  Apparency adds syntax highlighting and comments to improve the readability of the code signing requirement, so it won't look identical to the one produced by macOS, e.g. using codesign(1) with ‑‑requirements. If you want that canonical version of the code signing identity, click the copy button . You can always copy the canonical code signing identity without opening the Launch Information inspector, by using Edit > Copy Code Signing Identity (Cmd-Ctrl-C).

  To understand how the code signing requirement works, you can ask Apparency to evaluate it. Click the evaluate button to see how the individual terms of the expression evaluate: a term shown in green text evaluated to true, and one shown in red text evaluated to false; terms not highlighted were not evaluated, usually because a previous result short-circuited that term. If you move the pointer over a highlighted term, a tooltip will show the actual value that was used in the evaluation of that term.

  Apparency re-implements the evaluation of the code signing requirement, in order to show these sub-expression results. We believe it works the same as the standard macOS code signing requirement evaluation, but there may be edge cases; if in doubt, try using csreq(1) or the ‑‑test‑requirement option on codesign(1).

• The Gatekeeper Policy shows how the Gatekeeper status was determined. As explained here, Gatekeeper policy rules are also code signing requirements, and Apparency shows both the name of the matched policy and the underlying requirement expression. If the policy is simply Rejected, no rules were matched and the expression will be blank. Also note that the policy might be a deny rule, such as Unnotarized Developer ID, so merely matching a Gatekeeper policy doesn't mean that the code is allowed to run.

  As with the code signing identity (above), Apparency adds syntax highlighting and comments to make this expression more readable. Here too, you can click the evaluate button to see how the individual terms of the requirement evaluate; this works the same, and has the same limitations, as described above.

• If the component executable can be launched automatically by one or more Launchd Jobs, these are shown here. To identify the launchd jobs associated with the component, Apparency reads the launchd job definition plists from various standard locations (as explained here), and shows the ones that reference this executable.

  Apparency shows the Type of each launchd job as one of the following:

  • A Launch Daemon is defined in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons for macOS services, or in /Library/LaunchDaemons for third-party services.
  • A Launch Agent is defined in /System/Library/LaunchAgents for macOS services, or in /Library/LaunchAgents — or in the Library/LaunchAgents subfolder of your home folder — for third-party services.
  • An App Service Daemon is installed using the SMAppService API, from a job definition plist found inside the app bundle at Contents/Library/LaunchDaemons.
  • An App Service Agent is installed using the SMAppService API, from a job definition plist found inside the app bundle at Contents/Library/LaunchAgents.
  • A Privileged Helper is a daemon that is installed using the SMJobBless() API, using a launchd plist that is embedded in the daemon executable, which itself is found inside the app bundle at Contents/Library/LaunchServices.

  For each job, Apparency shows where it found the job definition plist; click the reveal button to show this file in the Finder.

  To view the actual property list, select a job definition and click Show Property List, or just double-click the job.

• Lastly, any Launch Constraints are shown. As explained here, a launch constraint is either explicit (for a third-party component) or implicit (for a component that is part of macOS itself), and will also have a type that determines which process the constraint is checked against.

  To view an individual launch constraint, select one of the listed types. Implicit constraints will have their constraint category value shown after the type. If you move the pointer over a type, a tooltip will show more information about where the constraint originated.

  When you select a type, Apparency shows the corresponding constraint as a Boolean expression — using a bespoke syntax that is heavily patterned after the code signing requirement language — with syntax highlighting and some (hopefully) helpful comments.

  This Boolean expression syntax is our attempt to make the launch constraint easier to read and more succinct than Apple's property list format. macOS does not create nor understand this format for launch constraints.

  Like a code signing requirement, you can ask Apparency to evaluate a constraint. Click the evaluate button to see how the individual terms of the expression evaluate: a term shown in green text evaluated to true, and one shown in red text evaluated to false; terms not highlighted were not evaluated, usually because a previous result short-circuited that term. If you move the pointer over a highlighted term, a tooltip will show the actual value that was used in the evaluation of that term.

  Depending on the constraint type, you may need to specify the executable to evaluate against by clicking Choose Code. Apparency defaults to the component itself for Self and Launchd Job types, but it can't figure out what the Parent Process or Responsible Process might be.

  Since macOS doesn't provide any public API for evaluating launch constraints, Apparency can only approximate how the macOS kernel will check the constraint. We believe it to be accurate for most “facts,” but there may be subtle differences, since Apparency is determining facts in userspace, without any additional context. In particular, note that on-authorized-authapfs-volume is not supported at all (evaluation will fail if this is referenced), and launch-type is always assumed to be zero.

  Moreover, note that implicit launch constraints sometimes use fact names that are not documented, such as apple-internal, in-tc-with-constraint-category or developer-mode. While we can guess what these mean generally, we haven't tried to reverse-engineer how these facts are determined, so Apparency won't support evaluation of such constraints.

Show String Literals from an Executable

Occasionally — such as when attempting to reverse engineer a component — you might want to see the fixed strings of text that are almost always embedded in an executable. These are known as string literals, and they can give you clues about what the executable does and how it works, even before you resort to disassembly.

Traditionally, the way to get at the string literals from an executable is to use the strings(1) command, which on macOS is installed with Xcode or the Developer Command-Line Tools.

Apparency provides a similar — but not identical — mechanism: the Strings Literal inspector. Simply select a component, and choose Component > Show String Literals from Executable (Shift-Option-Cmd-X). Apparency will extract the string literals from the executable, and shows them in a list with 3 columns:

• The numeric index of the string corresponds to the order in which it was defined in the executable. This order is not meaningful most of the time, but sometimes it can be illuminating to see the strings that are defined together. For example, if you search for the name of a command-line option, you might find adjacent strings that correspond to other (possibly undocumented) options. Initially, Apparency shows the strings ordered by this index.
• The Section of the string indicates where in the executable the string was found, which might give some context about what the string represents. For example, the Log Message section contains messages sent to the Unified Log subsystem (which will appear in the Console app), and the Obj-C Class section names classes defined by the code. That said, many strings go into the C String section, which essentially just means “a quoted string found in the code.”

  Apparency searches for strings only in these specific sections of the __TEXT segment, which are marked as containing C string literals (that is, having the S_CSTRING_LITERALS type): C String is the __TEXT,__cstring section, Log Message is __TEXT,__oslogstring, Obj-C Class is __TEXT,__objc_classname, and Obj-C Selector is __TEXT,__objc_methname. There are other string literal sections, like __TEXT,__objc_methtype, but we find these of little use for analysis, and opted not to grow the String Literals list (further) by including them.

• The String Literal is the string itself, very slightly cleaned up to escape embedded line breaks and remove invisible control characters. It can be useful to sort on this column to group related strings.

Apparency allows you to narrow down the strings list in a couple of ways. You can change the All Sections pop-up to show only strings from the selected section. Or you can search the strings for something specific — such as part of a Console log message, or a key from running the defaults(1) command. By default, Apparency shows all strings that contain the entered text, but you can click the search options button to change the way that the text matches. Click the cancel button to return to viewing all strings.

Apparency is much less aggressive than strings(1) about finding strings. As noted above, it restricts itself to very specific sections, which are declared to contain (NULL-terminated) C-style strings, and even then considers only a subset of those sections. strings(1) searches every section of every segment (except __TEXT,__text, where executable code lives, unless you use the -a option). strings(1) also finds anything that “looks like” a string — that is, four or more “printable” characters, whether in NULL-terminated format or not. This obviously finds many more strings, at the cost of giving you more data to plow through.

You can use Show String Literals from Executable on any component that has an executable — even if it is a system framework or dylib that has been moved into the DYLD shared cache, and therefore has no standalone file on disk. This is something that you can't really do with strings(1).

Show App Store Receipt

An app installed from the App Store usually has an embedded receipt file. This receipt is signed by Apple, and can be used by the app to verify that it was actually purchased by the current user (or by another user sharing the same computer). The receipt can be inspected to see additional App Store and purchase information.

Click the Receipt toolbar button (or use Cmd-Shift-T) to view the App Store receipt for the selected app:

The information shown for an App Store receipt is as follows:

• The Location shows the path to the actual receipt file, relative to the app itself. Click the adjacent Show in Finder button to reveal the file.
• The App Store SKU is a product number that identifies the app in the App Store. Click Show in App Store to open the product page within the App Store app.

  As a shortcut, use File > Show in App Store (Cmd-Opt-A) to go directly to the product page, without going through the receipt inspector.

• Identifier shows the bundle identifier for the receipt (which should match the app's bundle identifier).
• The Current Version shows the most recently installed (or updated) version of the app, which was Installed On the given date.
• The Purchased Version shows the version of the app that was in the store at the original time of purchase, as given by the Purchased On date.
• Receipt Signed By shows the certificate that signed the receipt, which should be an Apple certificate associated with the iTunes Store. Click Details to see information about the signing certificate and its trustworthiness.
• Receipt Verified shows the result of Apparency's own verification of the receipt, which is based on Apple's (somewhat neglected) guidelines, and may or may not match the verification done by the app itself — if it actually does any such verification. Generally, unless the app was copied from a different computer, or the receipt was copied from a different app, it ought to verify properly. If the receipt can't be verified, click the More Info button to see why.

Show Provisioning Profile

Certain apps — depending on their capabilities and how they're distributed — will have an embedded provisioning profile. This is essentially “permission” from Apple for

• a specified app,
• signed with a specific, Apple-issued developer certificate,
• to use a specified set of Apple services and/or macOS features (“capabilities”),
• and to run on specific Apple devices (or more commonly, on any device).

The provisioning profile must be signed by Apple, which allows Apple to restrict what an app can do and where it can run — even if the app itself is signed by a third-party developer and distributed outside of the App Store.

Generally, the developer creates a provisioning profile through the Apple Developer Program website (or allows Xcode to do so automatically). Some capabilities are allowed routinely — without, one assumes, any human intervention. Other capabilities — such as Endpoint Security extensions or DriverKit drivers — are subject to an Apple approval process. Either way, the app can't use these capabilities without a matching, Apple-signed provisioning profile.

The provisioning profile scheme originated on iOS, where the specification of devices is more meaningful: this is the mechanism by which an iOS app can be installed directly onto a limited number of registered test devices (without going through the App Store). It's possible to use a provisioning profile on macOS to limit an app to running on specific Macs, but this is probably far less common.

Note that not all macOS apps have or require a provisioning profile. If an app doesn't use any of the restricted capabilities, it doesn't need a provisioning profile. Also, an app from the App Store is automatically trusted to use the capabilities found in its entitlements — presumably since these were vetted through App Review before the app was posted on the App Store. Likewise, Apple's own apps — those built into macOS or distributed from the Apple website — don't require provisioning.

macOS enforces the provisioning rules when you open an app: if the app is not from Apple or from the App Store, and if it uses any restricted capabilities, it must have a matching, Apple-signed provisioning profile. If the profile is missing, is invalid or lacks the required capabilities, the app will crash immediately.

With that background, click the Provisioning toolbar button (or use Cmd-Shift-P) to view the provisioning profile for the selected app:

The information shown for a provisioning profile is as follows:

• The Location shows the path to the embedded provisioning profile, relative to the app itself. Click the adjacent Show in Finder button to reveal the file.
• The Name is a description assigned by the developer.
• The Profile Kind is typically Developer ID Application, which means that it grants capabilities to an app signed with a Developer ID certificate, for distribution outside of the App Store — the most common case where a provisioning profile is required on macOS. Less common kinds include Ad-hoc (signed with an Apple-issued “distribution” certificate, for limited direct distribution), Development (signed with an Apple-issued “development” certificate, for testing), and App Store (for submitting to App Review).
• The App ID identifies the actual app to which the provisioning profile applies. This usually contains both the app's bundle identifier and the developer's Apple-issued team ID. Less commonly, for certain profile kinds, the App ID might use only the team ID with a * wildcard, allowing the profile to be used with any app from that developer.
• Profile Signed By shows the certificate that signed the provisioning profile, which should be an Apple certificate, as discussed above. Click Details to see information about the signing certificate and its trustworthiness.
• Profile Verified shows the result of Apparency's own verification of the provisioning profile, which ought to be similar to the verification that macOS does when the app is opened. (However, Apple doesn't document these rules, so this is all based on reverse-engineering.) In general, the profile must be validly signed by a provisioning-specific Apple signing certificate; the app's bundle identifier and com.apple.application-identifier entitlement must match the specification in the profile; and the app's signing certificate must be provisioned (as described below). If the profile can't be verified, click the More Info button to see why.
• The Provisioned Devices shows if there are specific Macs that are allowed to run this app, although this will almost always be Any device. If specific devices are provisioned, this will be in terms of the device UDID — on a Mac, see Apple > About This Mac > System Report > Hardware > Hardware UUID.
• The Provisioned Certificates are the Apple-issued developer certificates that can be validly used to sign an app that embeds this provisioning profile. Click Details to see information about each certificate. If the profile is verified, one of these certificates will be the same as the one shown by Component > Show Code Signature.
• The Provisioned Entitlements are the capabilities that the app is allowed to use, as granted by this Apple-signed provisioning profile. This view of the allowed entitlements will often use a * wildcard to allow arbitrary values for certain capabilities.

  Use Component > Show Entitlements, described above, to see how the provisioned capabilities apply to the actual app entitlements.

Examining Components in Other Apps

If you want to examine a component beyond what Apparency shows, there are a few ways that Apparency tries to make this easier.

In the Finder

Occasionally, you may want to see a specific component in the Finder; for example, to look at the individual files that it contains. You can do this easily from Apparency: select the component in the browser, and click the Show in Finder toolbar button (or use Cmd-Shift-R).

In the Terminal

Alternatively, if you want to examine a component in the Terminal, you can select it and choose Edit > Copy Path for Component (Cmd-Shift-C). Then you can paste that path into the Terminal, or wherever.

If you want to show — or copy the path to — the main executable, instead of the component itself, hold down Option while doing the above.

Previewing with Quick Look

Sometimes, a component has a kind that will yield an illuminating Quick Look preview. Select the the component and choose Component > Quick Look Component (Cmd-Y) — or just press the spacebar, as in the Finder.

This is probably mostly useful when the component is actually some sort of script (Bash or Python or what have you), and thus will produce its source text upon previewing. Apps might bundle scripts for various reasons, but note that you might need to enable searching in de facto “code places” in order to see such scripts as components in Apparency (since they tend to live in Resources directories).

If you have any other Quick Look Preview extensions installed, you might get useful previews for other kinds of components. Of course, for most kinds of components — applications, executables and standard bundles like frameworks — the Quick Look preview will be generated by Apparency itself, and isn't going to tell you anything new!

Analyzing an Executable in the Hopper Disassembler

If you're trying to reverse engineer a component, you might want to disassemble its executable. Apparency provides a convenient way to automatically start analysis using the Hopper Disassembler.

Assuming that you already have Hopper installed, select the component in Apparency and choose Component > Analyze Executable Using Hopper Disassembler.

Apparency will use AppleScript to tell Hopper to start the analysis. (The first time you use this command, macOS may ask if you want to allow Apparency to control Hopper; you'll need to allow the access for this to work.) Apparency will tell Hopper to analyze the architecture matching the current system, and to use the default Mach-O analysis options. If the executable was moved into the DYLD shared cache, Apparency will tell Hopper to open the cache, and to select the correct library from that cache.

Either way, Hopper should begin the analysis without any further interaction. Note that Hopper does still display the usual dialogs, but the AppleScript should automate through them. It might appear that Hopper has paused, especially on the DYLD Shared Cache dialog, but give it a couple seconds and it should continue.

If you want to disassemble a different architecture, or to change the analysis options, hold down the Option key and choose Component > Load Executable in Hopper Disassembler instead. Apparency will still pass off the proper executable path — and deal with any DYLD shared cache configuration — but Hopper will stop to let you configure analysis options.

Hopper's open executable AppleScript command is pretty powerful, but the documentation is a bit sparse, so we'll mention a couple things we learned when implementing this:

First, the “hopperv4” command-line tool also works by sending AppleScript to the app, so you can learn a lot by seeing how it translates arguments into AppleScript. There is a (hidden) --debug-script option that you can add to have it print that AppleScript. (Yes, we did load Hopper into Hopper; how could we not?)

Second, in order to automate the selection of a library from the DYLD shared cache, you need to specify the path to the cache itself as the executable to load, and then specify the loader as DYLD_ONE (and not DYLDLoader). Finally, you give it a string that matches the entry in the file table (or at least a unique prefix therein). For example:

open executable "/System/Cryptexes/OS/System/Library/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_arm64e"
   with options [{loader name:"DYLD_ONE", selected_string:"libxar.1.dylib"}, {loader name:"Mach-O"}]

Apparency actually formats the exact string that Hopper would show for the library, since there are some places where the macOS and iOS (Catalyst) worlds use the same framework names.

Finding App Containers

If an app uses the App Sandbox, it is not allowed to read or write arbitrary files within your home folder — it gets permission only for files that you pick through an Open or Save dialog, or to files or folders declared in its entitlements. Otherwise, it is expected to work totally within its app container.

For each sandboxed app (or other sandboxed component), macOS creates an app container under your Library > Containers folder. The container folder is named after the app's bundle identifier, and within its Data subfolder, contains a structure much like a normal home folder — macOS actually tells the app that this is your home folder.

What actually winds up in this container depends on the app. Preference settings almost always wind up here (instead of in the normal Library > Preferences folder). A “document-based” app — that is, an app which offers File > Open and File > Save, such as Pages or Keynote — will still put files where you tell it (not inside the app container). But a so-called “shoebox” app — one that handles content more abstractly than at the file level, like Photos or Notes — may use the app container more substantively (although often the canonical content might be stored in iCloud).

Anyway, most of the time you can ignore the app container, but especially when debugging an issue, it can be helpful to inspect it. Apparency tries to make this a bit easier by helping you find the app container: select the app or other component, and click the Show Container toolbar button (or use Cmd-Shift-A).

Alternatively, if you want to examine the container in the Terminal, you can select the component and choose Edit > Copy Path for App Container (Cmd-Shift-K).

Note that individual components other than the top-level app might also have their own app containers. For example, the app might contain a Share Extension or a Quick Look Preview Extension, and these are required to be sandboxed also. Any such sandboxed component will have a separate app container.

Because Apparency itself is sandboxed, it can't access other app's containers — or indeed, anything outside of its own app container. As such, it doesn't really know if the selected component's app container exists, only that the component is sandboxed and where the app container would be. It asks the Finder to show where the app container would be, but it is possible there will be nothing there, since macOS doesn't create the app container until the component is first used.

Finding Shared App Group Containers

Because different sandboxed apps have different app containers, two apps — even two apps in a suite from the same developer — can't share data in their respective app containers. Indeed, even an app and another component within that same app — such as a Share Extension — can't share data in the app container.

Apple's answer to this problem is the app group container. This is a secondary container that can be accessed by two or more components, as long as they are from the same developer. The developer defines a group container identifier through the Apple Developer Program website (or through Xcode), and allows individual apps or components to use that group container via the com.apple.security.application-groups entitlement. A single group container can be shared amongst any number of components, and a component can have access to any number of group containers: this is all up to the developer to decide.

macOS creates group containers under your Library > Group Containers folder. Each group container folder is typically named with the developer's Apple-issued team ID, following by the developer-chosen group identifier. (Apple apps tend not to follow this pattern, using a group. prefix, or none at all.) Unlike the app container, the structure of the group container is not standardized, so the developer can organize it in whatever way they choose. (However, if the group container is used to share preferences, you will likely find a Library > Preferences folder inside.)

As with the app container, you can use Apparency to find a group container. Select the app or other component, and use Component > Show Group Container X in Finder. (The choices in the Component menu will depend on the selected component and what groups it has access to; if you don't see any Show Group Container items, there are no groups for that component.) Alternatively, to examine the group container in the Terminal, use Edit > Copy Path for Group Container X.

Using From Quick Look

Apparency provides a Quick Look Preview extension, which adds a bit more information to the standard macOS preview for apps.

The Apparency preview works in any normal Quick Look context. For example, if you open a Finder window to your Applications folder and choose View > as Gallery or View > Show Preview, you'll get an enhanced preview for the selected app:

Apparency tries to fit the preview into the space available for it — although macOS makes us guess about this, so you may need to resize the preview pane to see some information.

Note that the information in the Quick Look preview is only for the top-level app that you select; it doesn't consider any components within it. Click the Open With Apparency button to quickly open the app in Apparency, where you can see all the details.