Application not opening on Mac, allegedly damaged

[raduluchian]

The problem

Cannot run naturtag on Mac. It's not even that it's glitchy, it just doesn't even open at all due to it being interpreted as broken.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Download the DMG installer
2. Drag and drop the “naturtag” app into the Mac's Applications folder
3. Open the application
4. Pop-up immediately opens, saying:

“naturtag” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Bin.

Workarounds

I've tried granting it permissions to nevertheless open the app even if "damaged" but all it's doing is making the icon bounce a bit in the dock, then the icon disappears. I haven't been able to open the app not even once.

Environment

• Hardware: MacBook M1 Pro 2021
• OS & version: macOS Sequoia 15.6.1.
• Naturtag version: the one from the installation page at the time of submitting this issue

[JWCook]

Thanks for bug report. Unfortunately I don't currently have a Mac device to test this on, but there are a few things we can try.

My first guess is that it's a code signing issue. I don't have an Apple Developer subscription, so the app is unsigned. It looks like Sequoia handles unsigned apps differently than previous releases, so try the instructions here to run it. If that was the issue, I'll add that to the installation instructions.

If that doesn't work, I'll try making a new build with updated build tools.

Meanwhile, you can also try running it via the pyinstaller package here.

[raduluchian]

Thanks for the reply, @JWCook

Unfortunately the proposed workaround doesn't work because the app doesn't even show in the Privacy & Security settings as attempted to open, so there's nothing for me to manually allow. My setting for "Allow application from" was already set to "App Store & Known Developers".

So it doesn't seem like it sees it as a security issue per se, but more of a "broken file" kind of issue. Might be worth doing a rebuild and, evidently, I can test in on my Mac laptop.

[JWCook]

Here's a fresh build to try: https://github.com/pyinat/naturtag/releases/tag/v0.8.2b4

I updated and reviewed all the build tools and config, and added some basic image validation with hdiutil.

It's a pre-release, though, so there may be other unrelated bugs! Meanwhile I'm going to poll some friends to see if anyone has a Mac I could borrow for testing.

[raduluchian]

Thanks for the fresh build, however it still doesn't work unfortunately. Exactly the same behavior as before.

Worth mentioning also that since the original post I've upgraded to macOS Tahoe 26.2.