Intel App Mover (macOS)

A tiny Go utility that scans a macOS Applications folder for Intel (x86_64) apps and optionally moves them into a separate folder. Useful on Apple Silicon to identify Intel-only apps still running via Rosetta, or to organize mixed/universal installs.

Features

• Detects Mach-O CPU slices (Intel x86_64 and ARM64) directly via the standard library.
• Dry-run by default; requires an explicit flag to move anything.
• Filters Intel-only apps by default, with an option to include any app that contains an Intel slice.
• Simple, fast, no external dependencies.

Requirements

• macOS (scans .app bundles and Mach-O binaries).
• Go 1.20+ to build locally.
• Permission to move apps in the chosen directory (you may be prompted for admin rights when moving from /Applications).

Install

Using Makefile:

make build

This produces the binary at bin/intel-app-mover.

Or directly with Go:

mkdir -p bin
go build -buildvcs=false -o bin/intel-app-mover ./cmd/intel-app-mover

Usage

bin/intel-app-mover [flags]

Flags:

• -dir Applications directory to scan. Default: /Applications
• -execute Perform moves (otherwise dry-run only)
• -v Verbose logging
• -dest Destination folder for moved apps. Default: <dir>/intel-apps
• -intel-only Move only Intel-only apps (no ARM64 slice). Default: true

Examples

• Dry-run scan of /Applications (default):

  bin/intel-app-mover

• Move Intel-only apps from /Applications into /Applications/intel-apps:

  bin/intel-app-mover -execute

• Include any app that contains an Intel slice (even if universal):

  bin/intel-app-mover -execute -intel-only=false

• Scan a custom directory and choose a custom destination:

  bin/intel-app-mover -dir ~/Applications -dest ~/Applications/intel-archive -execute

How It Works

• Reads each top-level .app bundle in -dir and extracts CFBundleExecutable from Contents/Info.plist.
• Inspects the corresponding Mach-O binary to detect Intel and/or ARM64 CPU slices.
• Lists matching apps during dry-run; when -execute is provided, moves them to -dest via os.Rename.

Notes & Limitations

• Scans only the top-level of the specified directory (no recursion).
• Skips bundles missing Info.plist or the expected Contents/MacOS/<executable>.
• Moving apps out of /Applications can impact auto-updaters or launch services; confirm with your environment.
• You can undo a move by moving the .app bundle back to its original location.

Development

• make build — compile to bin/intel-app-mover
• make fmt — format sources
• make clean — remove build artifacts

License

GPL-3.0 — see LICENSE for full text.