How to Open a Mac App Package (And Why You’d Want To)

Summary

Most Mac applications are neatly packaged, but you can easily peek inside using Finder or Terminal.
App package contents typically include executable files, resources, configurations, and libraries.
Reasons to open them include extracting icons, customizing apps, checking for malware, and resolving app issues.

More often than not, Mac applications come in a neat little package, instead of a mess of folders. If you want to uninstall an app, simply delete the package and most of the time it’s all gone.

However, that wrapping paper is really just for show, and if you open up a Mac package you’ll see something more like a traditional file structure inside. There are lots of good reasons to poke around inside a Mac application package, so let’s unwrap this present.

How to Open an App Package on macOS

Opening a package is easy, and there are basically just two ways to do it: Using Finder, or using the Terminal. We’ll go over each method, step-by-step.

Method 1: Using Finder

Open Finder and navigate to the Applications folder (/Applications).

Locate the app you want to inspect, in this case I’ll be using GZDoom.

Right-click (or Control + Click) on the app icon. Then select “Show Package Contents” from the menu.

A new Finder window will open, revealing the app’s internal structure.

Method 2: Using Terminal

Open Terminal (Command+Space, then type “Terminal”).

Type the following command and press Enter:

open /Applications/AppName.app/Contents

Just replace “AppName.app” with the name of the app, which in this case would be “GZDoom.app”.

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What’s Inside an App Package?

While not all app contents will look the same, usually you’ll find a “Contents” folder at the top of the app’s file structure, and then inside you should see:

MacOS/ – The actual executable file that launches the app
Resources/ – Icons, images, sounds, and localizations
Info.plist – Configuration settings that macOS uses to launch the app
Frameworks/ – Required libraries and dependencies

You may not see them all, and you’ll probably see plenty of folders that are unique to that app.

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Why Would You Open an App Package?

Now that we’ve got the “how” out of the way, you might be wondering about the “why”. There are plenty of good reasons to open up your Mac app packages, but in general they boil down to four main ones.

The app icon is inside the package as an “icns” file, and being able to extract it is a handy trick if you need a high-resolution version of the file. That’s just one of the goodies you’re likely to find inside an app package, and the specifics depend on the app of course. These can include sound files, image, text files, or anything really.

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Customizing or Tweaking an App

Some advanced settings aren’t available in the app’s preferences but can be edited in its Info.plist file. This file is a property list that defines how the app behaves.

You can open it with TextEdit or a dedicated Property List Editor. However, be careful—modifying this file incorrectly can prevent the app from launching.

Individual apps may also have their own separate files besides the standard plist that can be modified or even replaced to change how the app behaves or what it can do.

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Checking for Malware or Suspicious Files

While macOS malware is still relatively rare, as the popularity of Macs increases, so do the odds that something you download and install from outside the Mac App Store may have something nasty in it. While you’re obviously far better off running an actual Mac antimalware app and most nasty executables should be stopped by the macOS XProtect system, it’s worth taking a peek inside a package you’re not sure about, to see if there are files in there that look suspicious.

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Troubleshooting App Issues

Using apps on macOS is usually a pretty slick affair, and users don’t have to see under the hood. However, now and then you’ll run into apps that don’t want to start up, or they give errors that seem to have no solution. For a lot of these issues, there’s often something you can tweak or modify within the package contents to sort it out.

For example, using GZDoom once again to illustrate the point, I was having a hard time getting the app to see game files I’d copied into the Application Support folder, but you can actually open up the GZDoom package and put those game files directly into the “macOS” folder, where they’ll work just the same.

I love that macOS hides most of the nuts and bolts of the file system or applications during normal use, but knowing how to get at those same nuts and bolts when you need to is a valuable tool to have in your macOS knowledge kit.

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