View Installer Package Contents

Since Mac OS X premiered in 2001, a wide range of applications have shipped with installers in Apple's .pkg format. While the contents of these installers were originally browsable in the Finder or from the command line, determining exactly what will be installed (and where) can still be a difficult and time-consuming process. It's made all the more frustrating by the fact that .pkginstallers lack an uninstall option, making such detective work a requirement to completely uninstall some third-party software. And in Leopard, there's a new "flat package" format, which can't even be read without Apple's Developer Tools.

That's where Suspicious Package comes in, a Quick Look plugin that lets you view exactly what and how will get installed by any package-format installer.

Just select a .pkg file in the Finder, hit the space key, and you're greeted with an interactive Quick Look window. The folder structure of the installer can be browsed using the unfolding arrows to the left of the file names, and the installation scripts can be read with the expansion button to the left of the script icon. Suspicious Package even lets you know if an installer requires an administrative password to run, or that your machine be restarted after installation.

Designed to do just one thing, and do it very well, Suspicious Package is an incredibly clever (and incredibly useful) little utility. It's also an enormous time saver, and a fantastic extension of Apple's Quick Look framework.

Suspicious Package is available for free from Mothers Ruin Software.