Silicon

About

Identify the binary architecture of every app and supported plugin installed on your Mac:

Silicon scans .app bundles, parses their Mach-O executables, and classifies each application as Apple Silicon (ARM), Universal, Intel 64, Intel 32, or PowerPC -- or any combination. It can also scan macOS audio plugin folders for Mach-O binaries and optionally cross-reference Homebrew to show the latest available version alongside each installed app.

Features

• Architecture detection — Apple Silicon, Universal, Intel 64/32, PowerPC
• Flexible filtering — independent checkboxes for each architecture, plus Universal and Non-ARM filters
• Homebrew version lookup — compares installed apps against Homebrew cask and formula data (24-hour cache)
• Export — CSV and HTML exports with architecture, version, bundle ID, path, and optional Homebrew columns
• Special Folders — include extra scan roots or exclude directories from scans via Preferences
• Audio plugin scanning — optionally scans /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/ and ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/ for Mach-O binaries
• Sort options — by name, architecture, or path (ascending/descending)

Installation

Download the latest release from the Releases page and move Silicon.app to your /Applications folder.

Or build from source with Xcode and the local Makefile targets below.

Building From Source

Prerequisites:

• Xcode with command line tools installed
• Git submodules initialized

Fetch the required submodules first:

make submodules

Common local build commands:

make build        # Build Release for the host/default architecture
make app-intel    # Build and stage build/dist/x86_64/Silicon.app
make app-arm      # Build and stage build/dist/arm64/Silicon.app
make dmg-intel    # Create build/dist/Silicon-<version>-x86_64.dmg
make dmg-arm      # Create build/dist/Silicon-<version>-arm64.dmg
make dist         # Create both Intel and Apple Silicon DMGs
make clean        # Remove build output

Local builds are unsigned by default so they work without a developer certificate:

make dist SIGNING=unsigned

Other signing modes:

make dist SIGNING=adhoc
make dist SIGNING=automatic

Apple Silicon builds use MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=11.0 by default because macOS arm64 apps require Big Sur or later. Output is written under build/dist/. Additional build details are in BUILDING.md and Engineering.md.

Changelog

Unreleased

• Replaced the Folder Blacklist preferences table with Special Folders that can be marked Included or Excluded
• Added a Scan for Audio Plugins preference that includes /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/ and ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/
• Audio plugin folders scan every file recursively and report Mach-O binaries as application-style results

v1.1.0

• Added Universal and Non-ARM architecture filter checkboxes
• Added Homebrew version lookup (cask + formula, 24-hour cache)
• Added Brew Formula and Brew Version columns to table and exports
• Fixed version information missing from CSV/HTML exports
• Added GitHub Actions CI and release workflows

v1.0.5

• Bug fixes and stability improvements

v1.0.4

• Initial public release

License

Project is released under the terms of the MIT License.

Repository Infos

Owner:          DigiDNA SARL
Web:            www.imazing.com
Blog:           blog.imazing.com
Twitter:        @DigiDNA
GitHub:         github.com/DigiDNA

Fork Owner:     Byron Scott Jones
Fork Github:    ByronScottJones/silicon

Disclaimers

App Notarization

This application is open source, and not notarized at this time. I will not be submitting it to the app store. If the original developer wishes to pull in my updates and release it in the app store, they are welcome to do so.

Privacy Policy

I have seen no evidence in the code that the original application transmits data to third parties. My additions pull two JSON files from HomeBrew, but I do not transmit information to them, or any other entities. All processing stays on your local system.

AI

I am a software engineer with nearly 50 years of experience. I now use AI tools to assist me with development. For this project, I have used Claude.ai and Anthropic GPT 5.5. After each feature update, I reviewed the application to ensure that it was working as I intended. As someone with Frontotemporal Dementia, AI tools are literally saving my career, and allowing me to continue working longer in a field that I love. If you don't like AI, you are welcome to not use my fork of this application. If you do not like that I use AI, tough.

In the words of Bender: