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"Unidentified developer" problem with macOS and itch.io games

A topic by ofdw28 created Dec 23, 2020 Views: 1,678 Replies: 3
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I recently downloaded Fragments of Euclid, and found that it could not be installed because security settings prevent apps from "unidentified developers" from being installed. Has anyone else come across this problem with itch.io games? Did you find a solution?

As far as I know, there is no easy solution to this problem. However I have found most people who download games from itch on a mac know how to manually turn this off in the settings so it is not so much of a problem. Another, far worse problem you may run into which caused me a lot of trouble, is that when you build a game on a machine running windows of linux and create a MacOS build (I use Unity so not 100 percent sure that this problem carries over to other engines) then zip it up, the exec file loses its executable status on Mac. The user must enter the terminal and manually reinstate the .exec status for the file in order to launch the program. Here is a fix for that problem. I recommend putting a link to this in your download instruction for Mac users. Game won't open on Mac - Unity Forum

Moderator(+1)

when you build a game on a machine running windows of linux and create a MacOS build […] then zip it up, the exec file loses its executable status on Mac.

I haven’t tried it myself, but to my understanding this is an issue only on windows, based on how they work behind the scenes. I believe all Unix-like systems, including Linux and MacOS, should be able to keep permissions when sending files between platforms.

(+1)

Assuming you successfully downloaded the game (I tried it with Firefox), instead of double-clicking on the .app file, control-click and in the resulting popup context menu select Open, then you will get this menu, ignore the warning designed to scare everyone into using  only the Mac App Store, and select Open.



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