Apparency 1.7 – Check what’s inside an app.
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
Enhanced the Launch Information inspector to show implicit launch constraints, which are those associated with the components of macOS itself. Open a macOS component in Apparency, and use Component > Show Launch Information to see the constraints that apply. Use Window > Implicit Launch Constraints to see all of the implicit constraints defined by macOS. Props to Csaba Fitzl for reverse-engineering and documenting this mechanism.
Improved the handling of components that are ad hoc-signed by the macOS linker. The linker does this signing to meet the Apple Silicon requirement that all executables have a code signing digest, or cdhash. This used to be shown as having Conflicting signatures, which was technically accurate (because the Intel code is usually unsigned) but was nevertheless confusing. Now, in the most typical case of linker signing, the Signed By will be Linker (Ad-Hoc).
Enabled the Show Code Signature button (on the toolbar or the info pane) for more cases of Conflicting signatures, especially those involving ad-hoc signatures. This allows you to see the details for each processor architecture. For example, this can be useful on certain apps exported by Script Debugger’s Export Run-Only command.
For macOS Sonoma “web apps” — created in Safari using File > Add to Dock — Apparency now shows a Kind Detail of “Safari Web App” in the info pane.
Fixed a bug where certain macOS frameworks wouldn’t open correctly, showing the error bundle format is ambiguous (could be app or framework). This could happen after a macOS update, if the framework now resides on a a “cryptex” rather than on the Signed System Volume. (This can happen with Rapid Security Response updates, but also with updates like Safari, which installs new versions of WebKit and related frameworks.) Apparency will now correctly recognize the special status of macOS system frameworks, even on the cryptex volume.
Fixed a bug where opening a component using the “appy” command-line tool could silently fail, especially if the given path happens to be a symbolic link, such as /Applications/Safari.app (which links to a path on a “cryptex” volume). Apparency will now properly open the target of the symlink — or will show an error if it can’t do so.
Removed support for macOS 11 (Big Sur).
