Built Mac app telling testers it's damaged and can't be opened

Question

Created Mar ’20

Replies 4

Boosts 0

Participants 4

This is a new one on me. My built app works great on all my systems. But when I send it off to testers to run, if they launch it from Finder they get an alert that says "<appname> is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash."

There's no information in Console about what might be wrong, other than that the app was sent a SIGKILL.

Does anyone have thoughts on what could be causing this? I have confirmed that the app runs fine for me even on a machine that has no Apple ID set up, so it's not about being tied to my Apple account from a signing perspective or whatever (and the alert message is wrong for that to be the issue anyway).

Alternatively (or in addition) -- is there a tool that can analyze my application to tell me about any issues with the way it's packaged, its metadata, etc to help me understand issues like this? Haven't been able to find one.

Thanks,

Eric Shepherd

Boost

Answer 1

KMT OP

Mar ’20

>But when I send it off to testers

Describe that process...

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Answer 2

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Mar ’20

Is this a Mac App Store app? Or does it ship outside of the Mac App store via Developer ID?

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—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

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Answer 3

krekeltronics OP

Apr ’20

Hi Quinn,

We are experiencing this exact issue with apps submitted to the Mac App Store. One day, we just started getting support requests from users suddenly getting the "damaged" popup. I assumed it might have to do with an expired certificate, macOS runtime changed in an OS update, or something, so I re-built the app using the latest Xcode/SDK and resubmitted just 2 days ago. The Apple review folks came back with the same popup and rejected the update.

What are potential causes of this in otherwise properly built/archived/signed Mac apps?

Thanks!

Patrick

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Answer 4

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Apr ’20

My understanding is that this alert gets presented when you app exits with code 173. If you’re seeing this happen randomly in the field, I recommend that you add logging to your app’s receipt validation to work out what caused it to exit in this way.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!”
Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

0