Open apps from unidentified developer [CLOSED]

Questions, glitches, bugs and crashes
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sasha
Posts: 168
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 4:59 pm

Open apps from unidentified developer [CLOSED]

Post by sasha » Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:26 am

When opening apps from an unidentified developer/not from Mac App Store for the first time, there's a warning dialog and the app is not run.
open1.png
open1.png (48.87 KiB) Viewed 8730 times
In Finder, you have to Right Click -> Open that gives you an extended version of this dialog with an Open button.
open2.png
open2.png (48.27 KiB) Viewed 8730 times
So far, I was not able to get this extended warning from NC and had to use Finder in this situation. Am I missing something?

It's a minor thing, but IMHO, it would be nice if NC's Right Click -> Open would behave the same as Finder's Right Click -> Open.

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mike
Posts: 1060
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 5:35 am
Location: Exeter, UK

Re: Open apps from unidentified developer

Post by mike » Thu Sep 21, 2017 10:27 am

Interesting one, never knew it was possible in Finder.
AFAIK there's no official APIs to bypass Gatekeeper's dialog, but I think it's possible to fiddle with it via quarantine info in xattrs.
This question needs R&D, it's quite shady at the moment.

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mike
Posts: 1060
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2015 5:35 am
Location: Exeter, UK

Re: Open apps from unidentified developer

Post by mike » Wed Jan 17, 2018 8:13 am

After a brief research, it looks like the "spctl" command can be used to achieve the same behavior:
spctl --enable --path /Applications/FooBar.app
I'll try to embed the background execution of this tool in a transparent mode.

UPDATE:
Nope, this requires providing credentials of an administrator account for any operations apart from assessment.
Finder somehow cheats and bypasses this authentication. That doesn't surprise much though.

So I think asking for an administrative account is an overkill.
There's a simpler solution BTW:
- Navigate to the downloaded app;
- Hit Alt+Cmd+X, this will open extended attributes of the folder (xxx.app);
- Select com.apple.quarantine;
- Remove it via F8 or Cmd+Backspace;
- Now Gatekeeper won't bother anymore.

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swoop
Posts: 54
Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2017 2:40 pm
Location: Brussels, Belgium

Re: Open apps from unidentified developer

Post by swoop » Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:57 am

mike wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2018 8:13 am
There's a simpler solution BTW:
- Navigate to the downloaded app;
- Hit Alt+Cmd+X, this will open extended attributes of the folder (xxx.app);
- Select com.apple.quarantine;
- Remove it via F8 or Cmd+Backspace;
- Now Gatekeeper won't bother anymore.
That's like magic! Thank you for the info!
Total Commander (Windows 95 - Windows 7) (retired for Mac)
Nimble Commander (retired Crax, Commander One, DCommander)
Macbook 12" 2016 - macOS High Sierra

JayB
Posts: 192
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2017 4:38 pm

Re: Open apps from unidentified developer [CLOSED]

Post by JayB » Wed May 23, 2018 2:57 pm

You can also script your own "Dequarantine & Open…" command:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
account=$(id -un)
label="$account-deQ"
for target in "${@}"
do
	target_name=$(basename "$target")
	prompt="$account wants to dequarantine $target_name."
	osascript &>/dev/null << EOF
do shell script "/usr/bin/xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine \"$target\" 2>/dev/null && /usr/bin/spctl --add --label \"$label\" \"$target\" 2>/dev/null && /usr/bin/spctl --enable --label \"$label\" 2>/dev/null" with prompt "$prompt" with administrator privileges
EOF
	open -a "$target"
done
exit
Save it as a shell script & add the script as a tool in Nimble Commander Preferences, then assign a keyboard shortcut, e.g. CTRL-ALT-CMD-Q. Note: haven't tested it thoroughly, but it should work imho. Running the script with administrator privileges is necessary: spctl always needs it (see comment above), and the xattr command also needs it in case you have an app or executable installed with admin privileges.

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