ricardo on Nostr: So, #Apple got weird with running unsigned applications in #macOS 15.1. Basically, ...

So, #Apple got weird with running unsigned applications in #macOS 15.1. Basically, you’ll get a really weird error trying to run an unsigned app that was installed after upgrading to 15.1.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s really easy to deal with this.

First, you have to create a codesign certificate, then you need to run a command to sign the app.  There are instructions for that here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27474751/how-can-i-codesign-an-app-without-being-in-the-mac-developer-program.  

That’s right, you don’t have to pay for a developer account to do this.

Second, we noticed even after running the ‘—deep’ option on codesign, the app wouldn’t run.  This is also really easy to fix, by typing: sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine AppName.app from the /Applications directory.

We have two aliases in our .zshrc for this process:

alias self-sign-dammit = ‘codesign -fs my-self-sign-certname —deep’
alias unquarantine='sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine'

That makes things quick with:
self-sign-dammit /Applications/TargetApplication.app
unquarantine /Applications/TargetApplication.app