OS X Sierra "unidentified developer" error now worse because of security settings

marsaute

Hi there!

I am quite sure you know this already. Since Sierra, the Gatekeepter in OSX is stricter. The "Security" GUI now only allows to run apps from App Store and identified developers. Since most users will not be willing or able to run command line scripts to reactivate the missing "unidentified developers" option, this issue is now worse than ever.

Is there a way to become identified developer or are you working on another solution for this already?

Best wishes,
Marian Sauter

Jarik

Hi Marian Sauter,

Did you try right clicking the OpenSesame.app in the Finder and choosing Open?

Best,
Jarik

Daniel

Hi Marian Sauter,

We have been thinking of jumping the official hoops that Apple poses to become an identified developer; and of course we'd love to have OpenSesame available in the app store! So yes, we have been looking into this since a while now, but we agreed that, for now, this requires way too many substantial changes to OpenSesame:

• We have to sandbox the app, which means OpenSesame cannot read or write to and from the file system except for certain pre-specified locations. At the moment, this is a pretty problematic demand, because we store all settings and such in a .opensesame folder in a user's home folder. Next to this, we also allow to load plugins from random user-specified locations in the file system, which would also no longer be allowed.
• We have to digitally sign each component in the OpenSesame app, which is a process I don't really understand yet (to be honest, I haven't really invested much time in looking into this yet).
• And quite some other things, see this page if you'd like to know more.

Thus, making OpenSesame app-store compatible would require us to make some extensive changes in how OpenSesame currently works, and we will have to think of some app store compatible approaches to the problems described above. We are working on it, but it may be a (long) while, before it is realised.

I haven't upgraded to Mac OS Sierra myself yet, so I don't know how bad this "protection" against unsigned apps has become, but if it is as you say, we may have to pick up the pace with this...

marsaute

Thanks for your answer! I didn't know similarly strict rules have to be followed for distributing apps as identified developer outside the app store. That sucks!

But I completely understand that it is way too much work at the moment.

Jarik

@marsaute

Could you confirm the "right clicking the OpenSesame.app in the Finder and choosing Open" method works for MacOS Sierra? You should only have to do this ones, as in the next time you can just double click the OpenSesame application.

Best,
Jarik