Mac App Notarization Workflow in 2022
The Notarization API changed a bit, so my old scripts broke. Revisiting the approach, it’s delightfully simple to notarize an app nowadays if you use the Apple toolchain on macOS. I haven’t watched the WWDC 2022 video on Notarization but did take the documentation link there into account.
AppMover Swift Library to Move Your macOS App to the Applications Folder
Oskar Groth published a modern iteration of the “LetsMove” framework where you can show a dialog at app launch, asking the user if she wants to move the app to /Applications first.
This is still a crucial feature if you distribute downloads that unpack into the ~/Downloads folder: Gatekeeper’s App Translocation will actually start it from a random sandboxed folder. To prevent this from happening, distribute your apps as a DMG with a shortcut to /Applications to nudge your users to move the app there directly.
Get https://github.com/OskarGroth/AppMover on GitHub.
See also:
- To offset potential bugs when moving the app bundle during runtime, Daniel Jalkut wrote a tool for that.
- Michael Tsai’s overview of Gatekeeper Path Randomization.