Mist

Mist is a macOS‑only utility that automates the discovery and retrieval of macOS firmware files and installer images. It presents a catalog of available releases, showing details such as version, build number, release date and file size, and can filter the list to items compatible with the host machine. The catalog can be exported in CSV, JSON, Property List or YAML formats.

For Apple Silicon Macs the app can download a firmware restore file and verify its SHA‑1 checksum, while for Intel Macs it can generate installer bundles, disk images, bootable ISO files and installer packages suitable for virtualization or direct installation. Downloads may be signed, cached, and verified against chunklist checksums, with automatic retries for failures. Users can select from standard, customer seed, developer seed, and public seed software update catalogs, provided they have the appropriate program memberships.

The software runs on macOS Monterey 12.0 and later, is built with Swift 5.10 and Xcode 15.0, and is distributed via GitHub releases or Homebrew. It is maintained by Nindi Gill and incorporates several open‑source libraries for YAML export, secure inter‑process communication and other functionality.