Apple will not allow QGIS on macOS to open / unverified developer #55663
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wnrand
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@wnrand, could you please specify if you have followed the instruction displayed on the Download page?
Does the issue occur trying to install QGIS or trying to launch QGIS after installation? Please also specify what is the exact version of your OS and how did you download the QGIS installer. |
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Here are some infos from Apple: https://support.apple.com/HT202491#openanyway |
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The QGIS project highly values your report and would love to see it addressed. However, this issue has been left in feedback mode for the last 14 days and is being automatically marked as "stale". |
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While we hate to see this happen, this issue has been automatically closed because it has not had any activity in the last 42 days despite being marked as feedback. If this issue should be reconsidered, please follow the guidelines in the previous comment and reopen this issue. |
I have tried the instructions using both the LTS and most recent versions.
This occurs when trying to launch QGIS after installation.
Currently running Sonoma 14.1.2 and I downloaded directly from the site. |
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@jackvaughanjr, thanks. It would be very useful if you indicated in detail all the steps followed and what went wrong and the exact error messages, in respect to the available instruction available on qgis.org, in order to try to fix the issue and then provide better instructions. |
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The QGIS project highly values your report and would love to see it addressed. However, this issue has been left in feedback mode for the last 14 days and is being automatically marked as "stale". |
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I gave up trying to get the new QGIS to work and went back to using the old version that Mac OS would allow to launch. I tried all those options. I deleted the old install a few times, reinstalled the newest version fresh and then -- first thing -- try and open QGIS with the control-click and select "Open". It never worked. I am now on a new workstation and trying to get any QGIS to work and am still getting the same error when first trying to launch QGIS. No option is given to continue. System preferences/Security/General does not allow it to continue launching either 
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Thank you. I have tried following that but it does not behave as the article says it should. I click "Open anyway" and it relaunches QGIS and leads back to the error message that QGIS cannot be opened. I can keep looping that way with no success at launching QGIS. |
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I had given up on trying to solve this issue and decided to just use the old version of QGIS that I had been able to install previously. But my workstation died last week and I'm now trying to get any version of QGIS to launch on the new workstation I have been given. I tried a fresh install and first action was to use the control-click to get the contextual menu and then choose "Open". But Mac OS does not give me the option to continue and the system preferences in the Security tab only trys to relaunch QGIS when I click "Open Anyway". I have found no way around this. Are there any other ideas for a way to get Mac OS to allow QGIS to launch? |
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I ran into this problem today - I work on a macOS machine that is managed by my employer. Our profiles are set to only allow installations from identified developers. I end up in the same loop that @wnrand does - there is no way to open QGIS when this security requirement is being enforced at the enterprise level. Our IT folks told me that my two options are to get the QGIS team to participate in the Apple identified developer program or use ArcGIS. Would love to hear if this is something that could be added to your roadmap!
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The QGIS project highly values your report and would love to see it addressed. However, this issue has been left in feedback mode for the last 14 days and is being automatically marked as "stale". |
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I have the exact same problem. The suggested fixes from QGIS website simply do not work. |
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@DoZiBo1, are you using a macOS machine that is managed by your employer? |
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@agiudiceandrea Yes. Support department says it needs to be signed. No way for me to circumvent it. |
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@DoZiBo1, AFAIK the macOS dmg installer is signed by the "Developer ID Application: Open Source Geospatial Foundation (4F7N4UDA22)" identity, while the macOS dmg installer is not "notarized". See the log at https://download.qgis.org/downloads/macos/qgis-macos-ltr.latest.log |
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@agiudiceandrea I don't know what this means. Can you translate this into a conclusion? Does it mean, it's signed but in the wrong way/improperly, or it is not signed in all the necessary places? Or is it signed and the problem lies elsewhere? |
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@DoZiBo1, probably your support department would mean to say that the installer needs to be "notarized". AFAIK the QGIS dmg installer is only signed, not "notarized". I think the sys admins can actually allow to install the QGIS dmg signed installer on you system, but their policy is probably to only allow "notarized" installers. |
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@agiudiceandrea Thank you for clarification. If I see this correctly, there is already open issues regarding notarization of QGIS: issue 218 which refers to issue 270 where the necessary work is supposed to be included. |
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The QGIS project highly values your report and would love to see it addressed. However, this issue has been left in feedback mode for the last 14 days and is being automatically marked as "stale". |
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Same issue. Extremely frustrating. |
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It is not really reasonable to be asking users to install packages that go around the security measures that are built into MacOS. At best it's sloppy, at worst a system could be potentially compromised. There is also the case of failing a security audit if you're in a company that requires auditing. I worked at a CA for a number of years, and I've also got some experience with dealing with Apple dev stuff and packaging. If I can help out somehow with getting this fixed, I'd be happy to help. |
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Same issue here, I have users who would like to install the application though the signing and notarisation issues are a blocker in terms of application security. |
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I am not sure if it is the correct thing to do, but what helped me solve this issue was changing my security & privacy settings. In Accessibility I added QGIS to the list of apps that are allowed to control my computer. Then in the Security & Privacy settings, where it states that QGIS is blocked you can click "Open anyway". Voila it opened! Maybe the first step was not necessary, because I wasn't paying attention if the "Open anyway" option was available, nevertheless it is worth to try these two steps if you haven't already. |
You can definitely make things work this way. However, from a security standpoint, it's not really the right way to be doing things. |
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I'm having the same issue on an employer controlled Mac. Does anyone know what the newest version of QGIS is that doesn't cause this problem? I'm stuck on 3.16 for now. |
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Possibly related to #55930. I agree with others that it's unreasonable to require users to bypass the OS security features. I won't even do this on my own computer in most cases. |
From that page:
For Homebrew users, this is obviously a non-starter. 😉 There is an important difference between their respective QGIS packages:
I don't think that building everything from source is the right answer, because installing and updating is slooowwwwwww. FWIW while the Conda-based packages look promising, they're also unsigned and unnotarised at the moment. I haven't tried going down the "normal" Conda path to see if those are actually signed or notarised – it looks extremely heavy weight. |
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Hey everyone, I had the same issue as I was trying to install the latest version in my company's mac and this fixed it:
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@Newkid76, Your company Mac administrator doesn't seem to push a strict gatekeeper policy. On devices where we push a gatekeeper policy there is no work around aside from |
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@greg-vernon QGIS on Mac has had some problems for a few years now. You may have noticed that complaints fall into two broad categories, lack of notarization (as here) and out-of-date components / missing Apple Silicon binaries. The two categories are unfortunately intertwined. There was an attempt made to produce a compilant Mac QGIS bundle a few years ago: the result was QGIS-Mac-Packager. The project was too broad in its aims, then fell far short of them. It is in two parts:
On dependency management / creation of a working executable: On organizing and notarizing the bundle: |
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@justinbb, @miceg seems to have described the problem fairly well. For those of us who are fairly techy, and have the time to mess around with macports, that could be the answer. Though, TBH, it's going to be a lot less work to set up a separate system to run Linux in order to comply with whatever security requirements employers require. For those are not technically inclined, and those who have worry about security compliance, the mac is probably not going to be a QGIS platform that they can use. None of the options supports an installation method that actually does any auditing of the packages, which is what Apple means to be doing with the notarization process. What might be useful is to have a look at what the PostgresApp project is doing. |
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I had success using QGIS inside a VM running Lubuntu with Virtualbox 6. Virtualbox is notorized. Edit: Point being that this might make company tech managers happy. |
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@kentr That works for the more techie folks out there. Still there are serious shortcomings. You still have the overhead of maintaining the Virtualbox software, and you've got users now having to manage whatever Linux that's running there. More importantly though, your video RAM is fairly limited with Virtualbox. It's probably just easier to have a dedicated Linux system, and use it remotely via VNC or the equivalent. There are a lot of workarounds that work for the more technically inclined among us. However, this isn't a good situation for the less technical users, and while there are some of us Geographers out there who are quite technical, there are many who are not. @justinbb macports isn't a great solution, as it tends to take over the machine. Years ago, I was doing some mac configuration work, and I decided to get rid of macports entirely, as it doesn't play well with others. For example, if you're using macports, it wants to own /usr/local, and that's a major problem. I would say fixing the install for the mac in general is probably way more important at this point than building Apple Silicon binaries. Of course, that's just my opinion. :) |
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Thanks all for your comments. At the current point in time, I recommend using conda (command line) to install QGIS for anyone more "techy" out there. At the same time, I am still positive that I will find some time at some point to look into the nasty details of rpath, python, dmg packaging (and finally hopefully notarization) using a vcpkg build. |
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@m-kuhn conda looks to be a much better solution than macports. Thanks for all your work on the conda packaging! NOTE: Don't install conda on a system you already have homebrew running on, or it will cause problems with homebrew. I've ended up completely breaking my brew install. DMG packaging and the notarization with that shouldn't be too bad after you have an install properly set up. |
@greg-vernon I defer to @m-kuhn on the way forward for QGIS Mac builds. To reply briefly to other items: I should have made a distinction between ways of putting together a Mac build inside the QGIS project for distribution, and ways for end-users to get a Mac build these days, while waiting for the build problem to be solved. In the case of the QGIS project, homebrew was apparently used to assemble dependencies in the days before the dreaded Packager, and m-kuhn worked on conda initially with the intention (if I understand correctly) of using it as a basis for a distribution; in the end, he is surely right that vcpkg is a better tool than any of the preceding for the purpose. (If nothing else, it would give the QGIS project control over its own integration-and-build process.) For end-users, different people have different experiences with homebrew, MacPorts, and conda, and this colors their perception. Homebrew, as you mention, is not an option unless someone completes a "formula" for QGIS. Both MacPorts and conda have their issues; whether an issue is disqualifying or not is often a matter of personal preference. (E.g. I don't find that MacPorts takes over my machine, and have used it in parallel with homebrew – but with limited usage of both. I find that conda is great in some ways and annoying in others. Etc.) And, as you also mentioned, neither of them is a good solution for less technical users. Fixing the install for Mac is indeed way more important at this point than building Apple Silicon binaries, as QGIS compiles and builds fine on Apple Silicon (and has done so for a long time) – it's simply not an issue. The lack of an "official" Apple Silicon installer is instead a side-effect of the problem of fixing the (bundling and) install for Mac, alongside the other terrible side-effect of official Mac builds having out-of-date GDAL, PROJ, and other dependencies. |
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@justinbb @m-kuhn, I was digging around in PostgresApp, and found a reference to create-dmg. Perhaps it's useful? |
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What is the bug or the crash?
I have been going around on this for several weeks now, trying various previous suggestions to get MacOS X to allow me to open QGIS. I have talked to our IT department and Apple and both keep referring me back to QGIS to solve this issue.
Control-click to select "Open" does not work (even for the first time opening with a fresh install.) Clicking "Open anyway" does not work. Rebooting into safe mode does not fix the issue. I believe I tried the hint to use a terminal script and that did not work either. Is there any other option to get QGIS to launch on Mac?
Steps to reproduce the issue
Navigate to QGIS application
Control-click to bring up context menu, select "Open"
Error message pops up that says "“QGIS” cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified."
Navigate to System preferences, open "Security & Privacy"
Click "Open Anyway" button on "General" tab
Back to error message
Versions
QGIS 3.34.1-Prizren
Supported QGIS version
New profile
Additional context
I fully deleted all QGIS supporting files before doing a fresh installation with no change in behavior
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