AwesomeREA.org

Tool

ipsw

Command-line toolkit for Apple firmware research and reverse engineering. It downloads and unpacks IPSWs, OTAs and KDKs and compares builds; inspects Mach-O load commands, symbols, signatures and entitlements with ARM64 disassembly; finds symbols and cross-references in dyld shared caches, extracts dylibs and dumps Objective-C headers and Swift metadata; extracts KEXTs and compares kernelcaches; and parses IMG4, decrypts AEA archives and inspects iBoot and coprocessor firmware.

Requirements and limitations

  • Release at review: v3.1.739, published 2026-10-16, with Linux, macOS, Windows and iOS builds plus deb, rpm, apk and Arch packages; the reviewed master commit is three cache and documentation commits ahead. Install with Homebrew (tap or core formula), snap or Scoop. The extras build (Unicorn-based dyld emulation, libusb device commands) and the Frida build are macOS only. Source builds need a C toolchain for CGO and, per the README, Go 1.26+, although go.mod declares go 1.27.
  • Firmware, caches and binaries are supplied by the user or fetched with the download commands. The README's device and App Store Connect commands are outside this entry's reverse-engineering scope. With --dec, macho disass and dyld disass send disassembly to the LLM provider chosen with --dec-llm: hosted OpenAI-compatible, Anthropic, Gemini or router APIs, ACP agent CLIs, or local Ollama. The separate ipswd daemon exposes a REST API, and the README points agents to the separate ipsw-skill repository, which was not reviewed.
  • MIT license. The README notes that extracted dylibs can still reference metadata elsewhere in the cache, so it recommends Objective-C analysis on the cache itself. LLM decompilation output is model-generated and needs verification. No firmware was downloaded or analyzed.

About this entry

Type
Tool
Category
Firmware tools
Relationship
Foundation tool
Targets
App · Binary · Firmware

Sources reviewed

The description was reviewed against primary sources. This does not establish runtime testing, security auditing or verified compatibility.

Primary sources

  1. README.md GitHub · blacktop/ipsw · Revision a9eae76
  2. README.md#L68-L80 GitHub · blacktop/ipsw · Revision a9eae76
  3. README.md#L137-L168 GitHub · blacktop/ipsw · Revision a9eae76
  4. www/docs/guides/decompiler.md GitHub · blacktop/ipsw · Revision a9eae76
  5. www/docs/getting-started/installation.md GitHub · blacktop/ipsw · Revision a9eae76
  6. go.mod GitHub · blacktop/ipsw · Revision a9eae76
  7. LICENSE GitHub · blacktop/ipsw · Revision a9eae76
  8. https://github.com/blacktop/ipsw/releases/tag/v3.1.739