Suspicious Package for Mac
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Suspicious Package overview
With Suspicious Package, you can find out important information about those package files you download. Do you know what files that OS X Installer package actually installs?... Do you know what scripts it runs during installation, and what they do?... Do you know who the package really came from?... Maybe you're quite literally suspicious of a package you've downloaded. Or perhaps you're just curious about what some package does. Or maybe you want to find out after the fact exactly what files a package scattered across your computer. Whatever the reason, Suspicious Package allows you to see inside an installer package. (And it's completely free.)
Suspicious Package is now actually both an OS X application,... and a plug-in for the Quick Look feature of OS X.
What’s new in version 4.6
- To improve compatibility with the macOS 26 (Tahoe) beta, fixed a crash that could occur when selecting a file or folder on the All Files tab. (This was the result of new API that Apple added to NSTextField, which happened to clash with a name in one of our subclasses.) This is the same fix that we made available previously in a “4.5.1 Preview” version, which morphed into 4.6 as it got less preview-y.
- Suspicious Package now flags unsupported package formats on the Review tab. The macOS Installer stopped allowing most bundle-style packages back in macOS 15 (Sequoia), so we're a bit late to the game here. There are some bundle formats that are not (yet) disallowed, although they probably ought to be; these are flagged with an informational message, since they might stop working in a future version of macOS.
- Improved handling of packages containing overlapping component packages; this is where the “same” file (by path) is installed by different component packages, likely with different content. This is probably uncommon, but where it happens, Suspicious Package wasn't making it very clear. Now it tries harder.
- When using File > Show Entitlements for Item on an app or executable, the Entitlements inspector now shows the processor architecture from which those entitlements were extracted.
- For the File > Compare Packages command, improved the handling of CLI tool paths for BBEdit and Kaleidoscope. Suspicious Package used to require that the companion tool (e.g. bbdiff or ksdiff) be found at /usr/local/bin, since that's where the app installed it. But there might be symlinks installed elsewhere (e.g. Homebrew installs them into /opt/homebrew/bin on Apple Silicon), so Suspicious Package shouldn't require another copy. Now, Suspicious Package will look for the tool inside the app bundle, and will insist on a /usr/local/bin version only if the internal app structure has changed and we can't find it there. This also works better when there are multiple versions of the same app installed, in that we will actually use the tool from the version selected by Suspicious Package > Preferences > Compare > Compare Packages Using.
- The spkg command line tool has a new ‑‑show-component-packages (-p) option, to show the component packages right in Terminal, without launching the Suspicious Package app. This gives component package identifiers, as well as versions, install sizes and install locations, all in a single plain text table. There is also a new ‑‑quiet (-q) option to inhibit status messages and other niceties, in order to make extracting bits from stdout easier. Run spkg with no arguments for updated usage, and see the User Guide for some examples.
Suspicious Package for Mac
Free
In English
Version 4.6
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(18 Reviews of Suspicious Package)
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User Ratings
Dec 16 2022
Version: 4.3.1
Unfortunately the new version is for Big Sur or higher.
But I highly recommend this app for anyone "curious" or "paranoid"
You can see inside installers and make your digital life a bit more secure.
Mar 17 2022
Version: 4.2
...it is very complete; what happens is that I have little need to use it ...
Jul 11 2020
Version: 3.5.3
Very impressed. Software is exceptionally well designed, easy to use, and teaches the user about how installer packages are created though Suspicious Package's use. While I love Pacifist, Suspicious Package (SP) has become my go-to and I set it as my default '.pkg' file opener.
It would be awesome if SP could have a setting where you drag your favorite anti-virus software into an image well and it would then offer the ability to open whatever package you are analyzing into that AV software whenever you run SP. (sub launch with file)
May 8 2019
Version: 3.4.1
Essential tool to see what sorts of sneaky sludge an app may want to stuff into your system.
Oct 8 2018
Version: 3.3.2
Love this app. Very convenient way to figure out what will be installed by a .pkg beforehand. I mostly use it through QuickLook, but the app itself provides additional features that are quite handy too.
