Utility to find iOS apps already installed on my macOS system?

I’ve experimented and loaded various iOS apps on my Mac.

Mostly some iOS smart home stuff that I occasionally want to use while at my desk instead of digging out my iPhone or fiddling with iPhone mirroring (yes, a 1st world problem).

Since I use them infrequently, having friction trying to remember which apps I have installed and available.

I looked in the applications folder, and they are not segregated into their own subfolder, just mingled with all the other macOS apps.

Wondering if there is a shortcut, shell script, or any other utility that could loop through the applications folder and access whatever special plist or file attribute might exist to build a list of the apps that are iOS and not macOS?

One option is to delete any app not on this list.

You do have Hazel installed, right? :grinning:


But I’m lazy so I would wipe my Mac and reinstall everything fresh. (Something I did at least a hundred times before I retired, and a couple of times lately)

I think(?) it’s System Information.app under Software > Applications.

On my Mac there’s a column “Kind” which has some labeled iOS

Otherwise you could go to the Mac App Store > Purchases “iPhone & iPad Apps” and look for the ones which say “open” and not the download icon

Thanks! System Information works, but some of the “iOS” listings in the “Kind” column are false positives.

But easier than wading through the Mac App Store.

I’m pro-actively doing a manual thing now - As I install iOS apps, or find them through System Information.app, I putting a finder shortcut from the Applications folder into a new desktop folder called “iOS apps”.

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