11/03/25

How do you decrypt iOS applications anyway? - The Crystal Website

I occasionally watch videos about software archival or preservation on youtube,
and a theme i've seen multiple times now, is people struggling for ages to archive an iOS application;

always coming up against the same issue: how the actual fuck do you decrypt an iOS app??!

many don't know this but; apple has a DRM Scheme called "FairPlay"
to prevent ripping applications from the iOS App Store; the way it works is every application is encrypted with a key specific to your Apple Account,
and can only be decrypted once you've logged into into it on your device one time;

and another thing about this is that DRM scheme is applied to all applications from the App Store, even free ones

so if you just rip an IPA file from your device or using iTunes, it wont actually work; that IPA file will work on your device;
and any device logged into your Apple ID- however it wont work on any other device;

for that you need to decrypt or otherwise "crack" the application; and the way to do that;
differs from what device and what iOS version you are using-

and as many have found out, there is alot of conflicting information online, about how to do this
 

however unfortunately, alot of jailbreak related forums tend follow (un)ethical hacking,

wherein selling a 0 click rce to the government to spy on journalists and blow people up is completely fine and ethical.
however cracking DRM on 10 year old software, or god forbid unbricking a $800 dollar device; that you got scammed off ebay
that was deliberately bricked by the manufacturer and made into complete e-waste; makes you worse than hitler.

anyway; so first is that your device needs to be either jailbreakable, or capable of installing TrollStore;
thats the easy part though, the thing is what do you do after that-

well i only have 3 iOS devices, from different periods; however it probably will cover (alot?) of cases;

TrollDecrypt (iOS 14-17) tested on iPhone 7 running iOS 15.8.3

if your device is compatible with TrollStore then install it (in our case, using TrollInstallerX via Sideloadly.
after that, install TrollDecrypt via the "plus" button inside TrollStore; and finally. just select the app you need;

then; it'll decrypt it, and can be accessed via the little "Folder" icon in the top right,
where it can then be saved to the iOS files app, shared via other applications, uploaded elsewhere.

bfDecrypt (iOS 11-15) tested on iPad Mini 2 running iOS 12.5.7

bfdecrypt is an app decrypt utility for iOS 11+; however i have personally had issues with it on (some) applications.
anyway jailbreak your device via whatever method your device supports, in our case Chimera;
(sidenote; for some reason the ios.cfw.guide website says to fucking put your device in the freezer if it doesn't work;
i am going to probably advise against trying that, like probably dont do that.)

after its installed, add "http://level3tjg.me/repo" and then search for "bfdecrypt" and install it;
you may also need to seperately install "PreferenceLoader", from the "http://repo.theodyssey.dev"

after that, you can open your standard iOS settings application; scroll down to the "bfdecrypt" option,
and enable it for whatever application you want to decrypt;

once enabled for a given application, just start that application from the Home Screen; and if it working;
you should see a message come up saying "Decrypting please wait"; then later a message saying its done-

once complete, there are a few options for getting it off your device, you can use NetCat as it says,
though from experience this often has issues with the app crashing or the connection closing pre-maturely,
for this reason i typically just copy the file off using a File Manager like Filza (from "http://tigisoftware.com/repo");
from there, browse too "/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application" you will see a list of all applications you have on your phone;

open the one you just decrypted- and then finally in the folder named "Documents" and
inside that there should be a file named "decrypted-app.ipa"; which is your decrypted IPA file,

which from there you can copy it anywhere else or to share it to another application (using the 'open in' option in filza)
btw, filza also has the option to connect to an FTP server or sFTP server ..

Clutch 2.1 (iOS6-10) tested on iPhone 4s running iOS 9.3.6

This one is really useful for decrypting old 32 bit applications; it works on iOS 6 and newer;
however rather annoyingly, you have to do this via the Command Line; but its not really that hard still,
anyway start out you need to jailbreak your device in our case, we'd be using EverPwnage,

after that, open Cydia, goto sources add "http://repo.kawaiizenbo.me" and then install Clutch 2.1
THEN add "http://apt.thebigboss.org/repofiles/cydia" and then install both iFile and MTerminal (or MobileTerminal if on iOS 6 or older)

new apps on your home screen will be present called "Terminal", open it,

you should see a command prompt, something like "iPhone:/var/mobile$", in there, you need to run as root,
to do that just type in "su"; it will prompt you for a password, by default the password is "alpine" (unless you explicitly changed it)

NOTE: entering a password into this will not display anything; but your input is being recognized;

after that, the prompt should change to say "iPhone:/var/mobile#", (note the hashtag, it denotes root permissions)
now you can enter "clutch -i" and it should give a list of applications you can decrypt ordered by a number;

after finding the relevant application, you can decrypt it by running "clutch -d <number>"
(where <number> is the number specified from the previous clutch -i command)

if successful it should say in pink text something like "Finished dumping com.application in 12.0 seconds"

after this, open iFile and navigate too "/var/mobile/Documents/Dumped" and find the decrypted IPA there,
from there you can copy it elsewhere or share the file with other applications
 

(btw!, there is a WebDav server built into iFile that can be used to easily pull files from the device)

This site was last updated 10/29/25

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