{"id":793,"date":"2023-08-12T21:17:05","date_gmt":"2023-08-12T19:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/?p=793"},"modified":"2025-05-21T13:26:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T11:26:00","slug":"quickly-unpack-xip-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/quickly-unpack-xip-files\/","title":{"rendered":"Quickly unxip files, e.g. Xcode"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here comes unxip<\/code> it’s an open sourced and easy to use command-line tool for unpacking .xip archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to install unxip<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The easiest way is to install it via brew using:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

brew install unxip<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alternatively, you can get the release (or source code) at its Github page: https:\/\/github.com\/saagarjha\/unxip<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

E.g. when you downloaded Xcode 15 beta 6 you just type:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

unxip Xcode_15_beta_6.xip<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manually downloading Xcode<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You can download Xcode via the App Store. But: You should not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\/<\/a>. It is not an official Apple website, however it links to Apple servers where all the Xcode archives are hosted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy unpacking! \ud83e\udd61<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ios-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1000,"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions\/1000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mic.st\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}