MobileGestalt Device Info

Back in March 2020 u/gianflo6 published a shortcut in a comment that showed how to read the cached com.apple.MobileGestalt.plist file. Intrigued, I looked into it, and although the information in it seemed relevant, the dictionary keys were annoyingly obfuscated. Fortunately I found this fascinating blog post by /u/timacfr where he deobfuscated most of them, so I decided to, based on that information, do this shortcut. The shortcut outputs a readable version of the CacheExtra key/dictionary in com.apple.MobileGestalt.plist , which contains interesting information about each device. Binary data Since version 1.2.0 the binary data in the dictionary is formatted as an hexadecimal string. Before "MainScreenStaticInfo": { "__type__": "data", "__value__": "AAgAAKwKAAAIAQAAAAAAQNsPyT8LAAAA" }, Now "MainScreenStaticInfo": "00080000ac0a00000801000000000040db0fc93f0b000000", This change makes easier to find some interesting data. For example, the MainScreenStaticInfo subkey above includes information about the screen of my iPad Pro 12.9" : real width ( 0x00000800 = 2048), real height ( 0x00000aac = 2732), and pixel density ( 0x00000108 = 264) a-Shell mini requirement Since iOS 18.4 Apple has blocked direct access to the com.apple.MobileGestalt.plist file from Shortcuts. The only way I know of accessing it is via the a-Shell mini app.