With the arrival of the Mac with Apple Silicon, Apple announced that we could run iOS and iPadOS apps directly on our Mac. Most developers are more than happy to cover more market and be able to offer their services to more people, but some, like Facebook or Netflix have decided to prevent this execution. Or, at least, it seemed to be, because it turns out that we can install these apps anyway.
The magic of IPAs
When we download an app to our iPhone or iPad, we download a file with an IPA extension. These same files can run without any complications on Mac with Apple Silicon. The only problem is that we need this file from the application we want to run.
We need the IPA file of an app we purchased that is linked to our Apple ID. This means we must have purchased the app ourselves and the only way to do it is in the App Store, so how do we download this file? Easy, from our iPhone backup, for example.
Run apps yes, but only apps that we have officially purchased.
The iMazing application allows us to directly download IPA files from our iPhone or iPad. The steps proposed by the Reddit user probably friend in this thread are:
- We connect our iPhone or iPad to the Mac and run iMazing.
- We choose applications connected iPhone or iPad.
- We played on Manage applications on the background.
- We played on Bookstore.
- We download the apps we want to run on our Mac.
- We click secondary on the download and choose Export IPA.
Once we have downloaded the IPA, we just double click on it to install it and move to the folder Applications
This system works in apps like Netflix, Instagram and many more. WhatsApp, on the other hand, has specific requirements and doesn’t even open. Keep in mind that with this system, even if it works, we bypass the restriction of developers to run their applications on the Mac. Some of these restrictions are aimed at preventing us from running apps that are not working properly on the Mac. Netflix, for example, does not allow us to access the full screen. Instagram or Plex, on the other hand, work perfectly.
Let’s also keep in mind that this is not the system that should be used to run apps on our Mac, so much so that it is likely to stop working in future updates. In general, although we now have this trick for installing apps, we’ll have to wait for the developers to officially allow us to use them. Of course, after seeing how well some apps perform without even modifying, it will be harder than ever to apologize that they aren’t already in the Mac App Store.