My iOS Artwork Tool Now Supports Ios6

Most of the really common images in iOS are tucked away in .artwork files. These files typically contain hundreds or thousands of images, all rolled into one file. I assume Apple does this for performance reasons. If you have an iOS SDK handy, you’ll find a number of .artwork files lying around.

My iOS Artwork Tool can both extract images from, and import images into, .artwork files. You don’t need to be a registered iOS developer to use the tool — it’s a simple Python command-line app.

I’ve just updated the tool to support iOS6. As it turns out, a lot of things changed. There are now two different .artwork formats: a hard-to-crack old-style format found in iOS5 and earlier, and a surprisingly easy-to-crack format introduced in iOS6. The tool now supports both formats.