Tutorial macOS application not verifying.

Synthx · 05-09-2017, 03:16 PM

Hello! Today I was trying to open Xcode, and while doing so, it was refusing to verify. It just gets stuck here:

[Image: 41333a4ef7b62cc4e8e5dc42534f9ac7.png]

Well, I was asking around, and @phyrrus9 was telling me since Apple changed the archive to "encrypted zip archive", it was gonna take ages for my mac to do it. I was trying to get Xcode 8.1, because my mac isn't updated to the most recent, so the App Store wouldn't let me download it. So, I had to get it from https://developer.apple.com/download/more
I was really needing to get Xcode so I could simulate an iPhone for testing purposes. So, upon googling the issue, I found a little something that is nice. If you know for a matter of fact that you have an application that is trusted for example, my Xcode from the official apple developer website., you can run this command in Terminal:

Code:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine '/Directory/to/Application/here'

Once done, you can now successfully open the application, and it wont try to verify the app.
You can do this for any application, I don't recommend doing it for an application that you downloaded from other websites.
Hope this helped you out. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, or reply below. I suggest leaving a reply below, in-case someone else has the same question.

BORW3 · 05-10-2017, 11:00 AM

WOW, macOS looks more complicated than linux, verifying apps? What is that supposed to be doing actually?

Synthx · 05-10-2017, 01:21 PM

(05-10-2017, 11:00 AM)BORW3 Wrote: What is that supposed to be doing actually?

It verifies if the application is legit or not I guess.. If file vault is enabled, most people just have it to where you can only open apps that are from the App Store, or from identified developers. Its pretty gay if you ask me. I just have it to where it will open apps from anywhere, but for some reason, its still does that verifying thing.

insidious · 05-15-2017, 06:25 AM

(05-10-2017, 11:00 AM)BORW3 Wrote: WOW, macOS looks more complicated than linux, verifying apps? What is that supposed to be doing actually?

It's not really anymore complicated. Linux does this too, except it's been doing it for longer than Mac so they got everything down to a tee.

Verifying an app usually means that you can be sure the app/package you've downloaded is the exact one you'd expect (no MiTM, or other fuckery)

For example, all packages on the Arch Linux User Repo and Official repo are GPG signed, kept up to date with a keyring package that comes with the distro. On arch, though, this mostly happens in the background, and if all your keys are up to date/have all the ones you need you may not even notice it's verifying the packages.