Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your IST file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert IST to another file type
To convert IST Scripts to another format, you need InstallShield or other Developer software.
Convert a file to IST
To convert other file formats to the "Script or Template File" file type, you need software like InstallShield or a similar tool.
About IST files
An .IST file is most commonly an EMV Smart Card Script used by developers and security researchers to send APDU (Application Protocol Data Unit) commands to integrated circuit cards. These scripts are vital for smart card testing and personalization tools like Galitt KaNest-ICC, JCOP Shell, or Zoolander X. Alternatively, .IST files function as InstallShield Project Templates created by Flexera, storing default UI settings and installation routines for Windows software. You might also encounter them as Fingerprint Minutiae Data files adhering to the ISO/IEC 19794-2 biometric standard, or as document templates from Inspiration Software. The main disadvantage of .IST files is their highly specialized and often proprietary nature. Smart card scripts can be difficult to parse without the original execution environment, and biometric .IST files are completely unreadable in standard text editors. To analyze or archive these files safely, conversion is necessary. For EMV scripts, convert to TXT or XML to review the APDU commands in a standard text editor without executing them. For database extraction, CSV is the optimal target.
Convert.Guru analyzes your IST file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert IST file to EST, UTC, CST, GMT, BST, JS, TS, PY, JAVA, CPP, C or CS, you can use InstallShield or similar software from the "Smart Card Scripting" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert SH, PY, KT, PS1, SWIFT, LUA, PL, JAVA, SCALA, JS, VBS or TS files to IST, try InstallShield or another comparable tool in the "Smart Card Scripting" category.
The IST Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our IST converter.