Flipper cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified in macOS Catalina

macos react-native flipper
Md. Robi Ullah picture Md. Robi Ullah · Apr 13, 2020 · Viewed 13.5k times · Source

Flipper is a platform for debugging iOS, Android and React Native apps. I have downloaded the Flipper app from https://fbflipper.com/, but I can't run it.

Error image

macOS version: Catalina 10.15.3

Answer

Ben Butterworth picture Ben Butterworth · Apr 13, 2020

Just Right Click > Open. Or alternatively, open System Preferences, Security & Privacy, General tab, and Click 'Open Anyway'. Guide on support.apple.com

This is a general problem (security feature called Gatekeeper) with apps on macOS where the developer is not registered with Apple (Paying $99/year) and so has not notarized their application. Specifically, Gatekeeper saves a quarantine flag on a downloaded file. So alternatively, you can remove this flag for your specific file, or disable Gatekeeper entirely so you never have this issue again.

A nice explanation by the Terraform team who faced the same issue:

Indeed the new version of MacOS is stricter about running software you've downloaded that isn't signed with an Apple developer key. Terraform distributions are signed with a HashiCorp key with signatures distributed out of band on releases.hashicorp.com, but MacOS Catalina is requiring participation in Apple's developer program specifically, and Terraform is currently not built to support that. source

From a app developer stand point:

Applications on macOS need a Developer ID certificate to verify that we are trusted developers. This also provides access to macOS capabilities: e.g. CloudKit, Apple Push Notifications. If you're making an app, you can need to go into developer.apple.com to create an Apple Developer ID certificate, or create on in XCode (in some cases).

Related questions

How to get react-native run-ios to open in iTerm instead of Terminal on a macOS?

How can somebody configure react-native run-ios to execute in iTerm instead of Terminal on OSX? By default, it opens a new Terminal window, but Terminal doesn't work as well with my window manager as iTerm does.

Read More
How do I install pip on macOS or OS X?

I spent most of the day yesterday searching for a clear answer for installing pip (package manager for Python). I can't find a good solution. How do I install it?

Read More
Find (and kill) process locking port 3000 on Mac

How do I find (and kill) processes that listen to/use my tcp ports? I'm on mac os x. Sometimes, after a crash or some bug, my rails app is locking port 3000. I can't find it using ps -ef... When …

Read More