What is the (file) format of iOS/iPhone apps?

ios file-format
humanityANDpeace picture humanityANDpeace · Mar 9, 2016 · Viewed 73.3k times · Source

I know that Android apps are packaged as *.apk files, but I have no idea in which way an iOS/iPhone app is stored?

Assuming that iOS apps need to be developed and up- and downloaded to the apple App store I assume that the app is stored as a file. Which format does this file have?

Answer

Milap Kundalia picture Milap Kundalia · Mar 9, 2016

An .ipa file is an iOS application archive file which stores an iOS app. Each .ipa file includes a binary for the ARM architecture and can only be installed on an iOS-device.

.ipa (file extension)

Related questions

How can I develop for iPhone using a Windows development machine?

Is there any way to tinker with the iPhone SDK on a Windows machine? Are there plans for an iPhone SDK version for Windows? The only other way I can think of doing this is to run a Mac VM …

Read More
Xcode - How to fix 'NSUnknownKeyException', reason: … this class is not key value coding-compliant for the key X" error?

I'm trying to link a UILabel with an IBOutlet created in my class. My application is crashing with the following error. What does this mean? How can I fix it? *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSUnknownKeyException', reason: '[<…

Read More
Transport security has blocked a cleartext HTTP

What setting do I need to put in my info.plist to enable HTTP mode as per the following error message? Transport security has blocked a cleartext HTTP (http://) resource load since it is insecure. Temporary exceptions can be configured …

Read More