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AppImage Repack

Unpack

First, look if your AppImage file is using the newest version of its internal format:

/path/to/your.AppImage --appimage-help

If you see the following line in the output:

--appimage-extract              Extract content from embedded filesystem image

you can conclude yourself how to proceed. In this case you have a (newer) type 2 AppImage format in front of you. (The 'path' part of the command may be relative or absolute.)

Second, if the first command didn't work, you can use a helper tool. However, you need sudo/root privileges for this: download appimagetool (which off course is available as an AppImage). Make it executable and run:

/path/to/appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage --list /path/to/your.AppImage

This should give you a list of all files and their (relative) paths embedded in your.AppImage. To extract your.AppImage into a directory named and located at /path/to/somedir , run

mkdir /path/to/somedir
/path/to/appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage /path/to/your.AppImage /path/to/somedir

Third, you can mount AppImages (type 1 as well as type 2) without the helper tool too:

  • Type 1:

    mkdir mountpoint
sudo mount -o loop my.AppImage mountpoint/

# You can now inspect the contents
# You can now also copy the contents to a writable location of your hard disk

sudo umount mountpoint/
# Do not forget the umount step!
# If you do forget it, your system may exhibit unwanted behavior.

  • Type 2:

    mkdir mountpoint
my.AppImage --appimage-offset
123456   # This is just an example output

sudo mount my.AppImage mountpoint/ -o offset=123456

# you can now inspect the contents

sudo umount mountpoint/
# Do not forget the umount step!
# If you do forget it, your system may exhibit unwanted behavior.

Hint for the 'paranoid': If you do not want to trust the AppImage, the third method is preferable. Because running (for type 2 AppImages) the.AppImage --appimage-extract or the.AppImage --appimage-mount or the.AppImage --appimage-offset means you are actually executing an AppImage (though not its content).

Repack:

To answer the question of @jayarjo in the comment below (how to re-package the AppImage after modifications?):

  1. You can use appimagetool not just to extract an existing AppImage into an AppDir. You can use it to also re-package the AppDir (possibly after some changes) back into a (modified) AppImage.

  2. Just run

     appimagetool -v /path/to/AppDir
    or 
    ARCH=x86_64 ./appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage -v /path/to/AppDir

    Watch output of command (made verbose by -v) for the location and name of the newly created AppImage. That's it.

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