[General]: On Sequoia 15.1 (Intel) Emacs.app does not run and has permissions errors

[matthemsteger]

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Working workaround: #742 (comment)

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Issue description

I can run emacs from the terminal emacs and get the GUI.

When I click it through Launchpad I get: The application “Dock” does not have permission to open “(null).” and when I double click on Finder /Applications/Emacs.app, I get The application “Finder” does not have permission to open “Emacs.”

I use osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to make alias file to posix file "/usr/local/opt/emacs-plus@29/Emacs.app" at POSIX file "/Applications" with properties {name:"Emacs.app"}' and that has worked up until now.

I recently reinstalled emacs (many times) due to the libgccjit issue in homebrew. Emacs seems to work fine, its just Emacs.app that doesnt work. While troubleshooting that issue (which ended up being an issue with libgccjit on Sequoia for Intel), I uninstalled gcc, libgccjit and emacs.

I tried:

sudo chmod -R u+rwX /usr/local/opt/emacs-plus@29/Emacs.app 

That did not change anything.

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /usr/local/opt/emacs-plus@29/Emacs.app  

That did not change anything.

I dont see anything in the security and permissions, and nothing I am doing is any different from the many other times I have upgraded.

The output of open -a /Applications/Emacs.app is:

_LSOpenURLsWithCompletionHandler() failed for the application /Applications/Emacs.app with error -54.

spctl --assess -vvvv /Applications/Emacs.app
/Applications/Emacs.app: accepted
source=no usable signature
override=security disabled

Any troubleshooting tips here? Has anyone seen this before?

My install: brew install emacs-plus@29 --with-native-comp --with-mailutils --with-poll --with-savchenkovaleriy-big-sur-icon

[sww]

I've run into the same issues on a 2020 MacBook Pro (Intel). I've tried emacs-plus@30, but ran into the same permission issues.

FWIW, you can still open emacs if you invoke from the command line:

/usr/local/Cellar/emacs-plus@29/29.4/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs

Additionally, Finder has no problems opening Emacs.app from the version installed via emacsforosx.com.

[lululau]

Same issue here after upgrading to macOS 15.1, 2019 Macbook Pro (Intel), but it works fine on Mac mini with Apple Silicon chips

[vtomilin]

Same issue on MacOS 15.1 Intel Mac

[jchonig]

I saw it too: #741

[jester7]

I had the same issue after upgrading to 15.1 on an Intel Mac along with an Xcode command line tools update. I was able to work for a few days by running it in daemon mode but today I finally found a fix to let the standalone app launch from the GUI:

sudo codesign --force --deep --sign - /usr/local/opt/emacs-plus@29/Emacs.app

After doing codesign I was able to launch Emacs normally from Finder, the Dock, etc.

[d12frosted]

just to explain a few deleted comments
@corrosive4354 was advertising some irrelevant site and spamming

[d12frosted]

@jester7 thanks for sharing a workaround; let me pin it

[matthemsteger]

I just wanted to report back that @jester7 workaround works perfectly. Thanks!

[vtomilin]

The below worked for me, note --strip-disallowed-xattrs:

codesign --force --deep --sign - -v --strip-disallowed-xattrs /usr/local/Cellar/emacs-plus@29/29.4/Emacs.app