So... roughly two years ago I made an Xbox emulation tutorial. The bulk of the tutorial involved dealing with Extract XISO. It's not a difficult utility to use, but it requires a lot of steps for a non-developer, like running CMAKE to build the binary, which requires Homebrew to install. Writing a GUI wrapper has been on my "to-dos" ever since I made the tutorial.

I can officially check that off from my main "Should do one day" projects.

I can officially check that off from my main "Should do one day" projects.


What in the hell is Extract XISO?

extract xiso gui


The Xbox ISO format is a proprietary disc image format used by the original Xbox console. It is based on the ISO 9660 file system but includes additional metadata and encryption specific to the Xbox. Emulators, like XEMU, on the other hand, expect standard ISOs. Extract XISO is a tool that helps to extract the contents of Xbox ISOs and convert them into standard ISO that can be used by these emulators.

Extract ISO works like the CLI utility, with simple input and output. You can grab the release here. Right now, it's not packaged completely, but it should work.

Using Extract XISO GUI

By default, the utility is configged to work and repackage ISOs.

  1. Download Extract ISO. It is a universal binary, thus runs natively on X86 / ARM64. You'll need to whitelist the app. Double click it and then click Okay on the "can't be verified". Go to the system preferences and go to "Privacy and Security", scroll to the bottom, and where it reads Extract XISO GUI, click "Open Anyways".
  2. Double-click the app to launch it. You'll need games in the ISO format. If your Xbox game dump is bin/cue, convert it to an ISO using BChunk or BChunkX. In the app, select the ISO for the input and select an output location.
  3. The app will create a folder from the extraction process before rebundling to a generic ISO. Delete the folder. The vanilla ISO will usually be considerably smaller than the source ISO as the entire XISO is an encrypted ROM.
  4. In XEMU, select load disc and then be sure to reset. Your game should boot up. Check the XEMU website for game compatibility.