Your Apple ID, not ours
Apple issues the certificate to you — the same way Xcode does. Your password never touches a command line or the disk.
Free & open source · no jailbreak · nothing leaves your PC
Put any app on your iPhone,
with just your Apple ID.
Sign any .ipa with your own Apple ID and install it over USB or Wi-Fi — the same way Xcode runs an app you wrote. No jailbreak. No paid developer account. Nothing between your Apple ID and Apple.
Windows 10 or 11 · 64-bit · MIT · verify your download
Drop an
.ipa anywhere
- Provision
- Sign
- Install
Waiting for a file…
Installed · expires in 7 days · iPASide will re-sign it
No screenshot trickery — that is the app, reporting the phone it is actually talking to.
Everything sideloading needs.
None of the black box.
Your Apple ID is the most sensitive credential you own. Every line that touches it is readable.
Nothing leaves your PC
No iPASide server. No third-party anisette host. Even the device headers Apple demands are generated offline, on your machine.
Tweaks, from .deb or .dylib
Drop in a Debian package and iPASide finds the dylibs itself, each labelled with its architecture. Rootful, rootless, roothide. Stack as many as you like.
Apps that don't die in a week
Free signatures expire after 7 days. The Library counts each one down and renews what's due — daily, in the background, with iPASide closed.
Two phones? It asks.
Choose the device and the connection. With more than one attached, iPASide refuses to guess rather than installing onto the wrong one.
More than one Apple ID
Keep several signed in and switch without retyping a password. Useful when one account has used up its ten weekly identifiers — though your phone still installs only three at a time, whichever account signed them.
Progress you can read
Byte-by-byte upload, then your phone's own installer steps — verifying, sandboxing, finalising. It ends at 100%, not at a spinner.
Updates that check themselves
iPASide notices a new release and verifies the download against the published checksums before it will run it. Nothing is fetched uninvited.
Four steps, and you only
do the first three once.
Sign in with your Apple ID
Once. Use a spare account if you'd rather — iPASide keeps the session, never the password.
Drop in an .ipa
Anywhere on the window. It reads the app's icon and details instantly, and warns you up front if the file can't be re-signed.
Press Sideload
A 299 MB app takes 95 seconds over USB, 108 over Wi-Fi. You watch every step of it.
Then forget about it
The part other tools leave to you. iPASide re-signs before the 7-day expiry, so the app just keeps opening.
Tweaks, without a jailbreak
The reason most people reach for a sideloader — so it's a first-class feature here, not a checkbox.
- Hand it a
.deb. It unpacks the archive and finds the dylibs itself. - Each one is labelled
arm64,arm64eorarmv7, read from the binary — no guessing which package was right. - Mix
.debpackages and loose.dylibfiles, as many as you want, by drag and drop. - Weak linking and extension injection are there when you need them.
What a free Apple ID
will not let you do
These are Apple's rules, not iPASide's. No sideloader can lift them, and any that claims otherwise is selling you something.
3 apps
installed at once, per device. Your phone counts every app signed by any free Apple ID, so a second account does not add slots — only a paid one lifts this.
7 days
then the app stops opening until it's re-signed. Leave the daily refresh on and you won't notice.
~10
new app identifiers per week — a separate ceiling from the three above. iPASide shows how many are left instead of letting Apple refuse you mid-install, and a second Apple ID gets you another ten of these.
no extensions
Widgets, keyboards, share sheets and watch apps are stripped. The app works; its extras don't.
no App Store apps
Purchased copies are encrypted and can't be re-signed by anyone. iPASide tells you before it starts.
A paid account lifts the first three. iPASide supports one — a free account is what's been tested.
Verify, don't trust
Every release publishes a SHA256SUMS.txt. Here is the hash for the current one, and the one line that checks it:
iPASide-Setup-x64.exe
published alongside each release on GitHub
(Get-FileHash .\iPASide-Setup-x64.exe -Algorithm SHA256).Hash
“Windows protected your PC”? Expected — the installer isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen has no reputation for it. That's a warning about being new, not about being harmful. Check the hash, then More info → Run anyway.
Updates are fail-closed. Nothing downloads uninvited, the checksum is verified before you're offered the install, and a mismatch is discarded rather than worked around. Installing is always your click.
Or skip all of it and build from source — every step is scripted, including zsign.
For the people who will
read the source anyway
pymobiledevice3 — pairing, lockdown, installation_proxy, AFC. USB and network transports.s2k derivation, two-step trusted-device 2FA.zsign, built from source: SHA-256 CodeDirectory, canonical DER entitlements, dylib injection.doctor, sideload, refresh, inspect and two dozen more, all with --json.
Questions, answered honestly
Do I need a jailbreak?
No. iPASide re-signs the app with a certificate Apple issues to your own Apple ID — the same mechanism Xcode uses to run an app you wrote. The phone stays completely stock.
Do I need a paid developer account?
No, a free Apple ID is enough. Apple gives free accounts a 7-day signature instead of a year and will not provision app extensions, which is why iPASide tracks the expiry and re-signs before your apps stop opening.
Does my Apple ID password go anywhere?
It authenticates directly with Apple from your own machine, over a connection verified against Apple's own certificate authority. It is never passed on a command line and never written to disk. There is no iPASide server for it to go to, and the code that handles it is in the open.
What do I need installed?
64-bit Windows 10 or 11, and Apple's Apple Devices app or iTunes — that is what lets Windows talk to an iPhone over USB. If it is missing, iPASide says so plainly and offers to fetch Apple's installer for you, checking that Apple actually signed it before running anything.
Does it work over Wi-Fi?
Yes, once Wi-Fi sync is enabled for the device. If iPASide reports your phone as USB-only while it is plainly on the same network, restart Bonjour Service and Apple Mobile Device Service — Apple's service discovers network devices when it starts and does not always notice a change made afterwards.
Can I sideload an app from the App Store?
No. Those copies are FairPlay-encrypted and cannot be re-signed by anyone. iPASide detects it while reading the file and tells you, instead of failing halfway through with something cryptic.
Will this get my Apple ID banned?
Free provisioning is a documented Apple feature, and iPASide uses the same endpoints Xcode does — but it is not an Apple-sanctioned client, and only Apple can say what they act on. If that risk matters to you, use a spare Apple ID. That is the honest answer rather than a reassuring one.
Can I use more than one Apple ID?
Yes. A free account can register about ten app identifiers a week, and a second Apple ID gets you another ten, so it helps if you are provisioning a lot. It does not raise the three-installed-apps limit: we tested it, and iOS counts every app signed by any free Apple ID on the device, then refuses the fourth with the same error either way. iPASide keeps the accounts signed in and switches without asking for a password again, and always refreshes an app under the account that signed it — re-signing with a different one produces something your phone will not install over the copy already there.
How do updates work?
iPASide compares its version against the latest release when it starts — a version check only, nothing is downloaded uninvited. If you ask for it, the installer is fetched and its SHA-256 verified against the checksums published with that release before it will run. A release with no checksums, or a file whose hash does not match, is refused.
Can I keep the signed .ipa?
If you want to. It is off by default; turn it on and the signed app is saved as <name>_Signed.ipa in a folder you choose, so you can reinstall it later without signing again. Settings shows how much space they take and can delete them all.
Is it really free, and what is the catch?
MIT licensed, no paid tier, no account, no telemetry. The catch is Apple's limits above, and that the installer is not yet code-signed, so Windows will warn you the first time.
Can it install to an Apple TV?
Not today — iPASide installs to iPhone and iPad. A tvOS .ipa is refused by name rather than signed and then rejected by your device. Two things stand in the way: provisioning for tvOS is a different set of Apple endpoints from the ones iPASide uses, and from Windows only an Apple TV with a USB port can be reached at all — the portless models pair over the network in a way that currently works from macOS only.
What about macOS and Linux?
Windows only today. The desktop shell and the engine were both chosen with a macOS port in mind, and the platform-specific work that remains is written down in the repository rather than promised here.
MIT licensed · no account · no telemetry · no “pro” tier