Issues Running The GUI After Downloading

App Translocation (Quarantine)

Sometime in 2016, Apple introduced "App Translocation" as a security feature. Apps downloaded from the internet will have a "com.apple.quarantine" attribute (see source 2. on how to check and remove this attribute). Apps that are quarantined will be "Translocated" when run. This means the entire .app package will be temporarily moved to a read-only disk image, and run from there. This does not agree with the GUI, which needs to run from a writable directory to work. The quarantine goes away as soon as the user moves the .app anywhere else (doesn't have to be /Applications).

Solutions:

• Distribute the Mac version of the GUI in a .dmg and sign the entire dmg.
• Detect when we are in a read-only directory and alert the user (with a popup for example). Ask them to move the .app somewhere else.

Sources

1. https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/app-translocation.html
2. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/181026/lsopenurlswithrole-failed-with-error-10810-cant-open-install-os-x-yosemite
3. https://blog.obdev.at/gatekeeper-and-little-snitch-rules/
4. https://www.synack.com/2016/12/16/untranslocating-apps/