The macOS Quarantine Bit Error Message Is Bad

The macOS Quarantine Bit Error Message Is Bad(lambdalatitudinarians.org)

3 points by vanilla_nut 354 days ago | 2 comments

Had no issue with the quarantine until they started with this message "is damaged and can't be opened" as it makes it sound like the developer has screwed up or the file didn't download correctly and it feels intentionally written this way to make non-App Store apps feel glitchy, unreliable and low class. Also a beginner dev gotcha cos the app will run fine on your own machine before you upload it.

Which really just feels so un-Apple and it's obviously someone internally has been given bonus metrics to increase App Store usage over just downloading and is being allowed to compromise the Apple brand and experience to get there.

> $ sudo defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO

Even worse this trash manipulation attempt pushes people to run commands like this which is a terrible idea leaving your machine entirely open if you accidentally run something from a spoof'd URL, or a script that managed to pose as a PDF document or an image.

Quarantine is a great tech, I don't see why it can't just be honest about being for security and that implications of running unsigned apps. Instead of it being used as a tool to try and get 30% cut of an app.

dont__panic 354 days ago | |

Agreed wholeheartedly about the error message. Death by a thousand cuts to indie devs.

I'm not sure it's such a terrible idea to disable quarantining if you know what you're doing -- I think of it as more of a safety net for the truly clueless. If it annoys you a lot, disabling it is totally fine. But of course users should be aware that it's better to leave it enabled!

I'm glad OP shared a way to permanently disable it for homebrew casks, though. I didn't know that env var existed, and this is a pretty common issue for smaller casks. Take a look at the GitHub issues for any small project and you'll see just how much this comes up.