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I was trying to distribute a macOS app to a friend to test it out. The friend said their Mac told them the app was damaged and they should move it to the Trash.

Apparently I have to get a Developer account, obtain a Developer ID certificate, sign every build with this certificate, and upload the build to Apple to have them "notarize" the signature.

The alternative is to teach my friend how to run obscure commands in the Terminal or disable this "Gatekeeper" (yes, such an unironic name) feature altogether, which requires some scary steps such as disabling SIP. I could be wrong about that last part, but I don't own a Mac so I'm more inclined to just not build software for it.




System Preferences -> Security and Privacy.

You’ll find an override toggle there. You can also use Right Click -> Open when launching the app. And no, you don’t need to disable SIP to disable Gatekeeper which can be done through sudo spctl —-master-disable.


Right-click + Open resulted in the same error dialog; I presume this has something to do with Big Sur. The option to allow apps from "Anywhere" is also not available in the preferences pane.


Right-click + Open has to be done twice to work.

The anywhere option is hidden by default, use sudo spctl —-master-disable from Terminal instead, which flips Gatekeeper settings to Anywhere.

Edit: there's also this path: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/415713/verify-code... which doesn't seem to activate Gatekeeper as part of the install process.


Just tell them to right click and select open the first time they launch it.

None of the other stuff you mentioned is necessary unless you need your users to avoid that.


That actually didn't work; see my response to the sibling comment.




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