Ever wondered why unpacking a new Xcode release takes soooo long? I don’t know either. Probably a lot of time is spent on validating signatures or other things. Anyway, sometimes you just want to quickly unpack it or unxip Xcode. Because Xcode is packed as a .xip file when manually downloading it.
Here comes unxip it’s an open sourced and easy to use command-line tool for unpacking .xip archives.
In case you never manually downloaded Xcode before and only used the AppStore versions until now: Please have a look at the section “Manually downloading Xcode” and consider using manual downloaded versions from now on.
How to install unxip
The easiest way is to install it via brew using:
brew install unxip
Alternatively, you can get the release (or source code) at its Github page: https://github.com/saagarjha/unxip
E.g. when you downloaded Xcode 15 beta 6 you just type:
unxip Xcode_15_beta_6.xip
Manually downloading Xcode
You can download Xcode via the App Store. But: You should not.
Basically, you do lose any control over it, i.e. when it does update itself. Just imagine: It can be a huge pain when you want to “quickly make a bugfix” and realize that Xcode just updated itself and nothing works anymore.
You can get any version via Apple’s developer website. But it is always a little inconvenient to dig through the website. Luckily, there is this handy website: https://xcodereleases.com/. It is not an official Apple website, however it links to Apple servers where all the Xcode archives are hosted.
Conclusion
That’s it! Now you are able to quickly unxip any Xcode release. It will take a fraction of time compared to unpacking it via “Archive Utility” or something similar.
In case you are interested: In the Readme on Github you can see explanations on why it’s way faster. I will not try to give you a wrong explanation here. So, please check it out!
Happy unpacking! 🥡
