ipa installation

IPA Harbor focuses on search and download. Install ipa files with the workflow that fits your device.

Recommended methods

• Recent iOS/iPadOS: AirDrop the downloaded ipa to the device.
• Older devices: Apple Configurator on Mac, or iTunes 12.6.3 on Windows (ipsw.me/iTunes).

Third-party sideload stores are not recommended in this guide.

Safari OTA install (optional)

IPA Harbor can expose an Install action in Safari when deployment conditions are met:

Requirement	Detail
Device	iPhone, iPad, or Apple Silicon Mac
Browser	Safari on the device
HTTPS	Required — button hidden on plain HTTP
Setting	Settings → Enable OTA install (off by default on non-Apple clients)
ipatool	v2.6.0+ for OTA-compatible downloads

Deployment options:

• Built-in TLS: -p 443:3443, HTTPS_PORT=3443, certs in /app/certs
• Or HTTPS via nginx / reverse proxy

If you only download ipa files to a desktop, a standard HTTP Docker setup is enough.

ipatool v2.6.0+

Safari OTA uses itms-services, so the device downloads and unpacks the ipa online. Some ipa files from older ipatool use compression that iOS’s OTA unzip path rejects, so install fails or never finishes — unrelated to HTTPS or the manifest.

Recent uuphy/ipa-harbor Docker tags usually support OTA install, but not every tag was built from stock upstream ipatool; early images built ipatool with scripts/legacy/ipatool-haughtyeyes-ota-compat.patch, and current builds now all use the latest official ipatool.