from Hacker News

The macOS Quarantine Bit Error Message Is Bad

by vanilla_nut on 5/29/25, 2:22 PM with 2 comments

• by whywhywhywhy on 5/29/25, 3:12 PM

  Had no issue with the quarantine until they started with this message "is damaged and can't be opened" as it makes it sound like the developer has screwed up or the file didn't download correctly and it feels intentionally written this way to make non-App Store apps feel glitchy, unreliable and low class. Also a beginner dev gotcha cos the app will run fine on your own machine before you upload it.

  Which really just feels so un-Apple and it's obviously someone internally has been given bonus metrics to increase App Store usage over just downloading and is being allowed to compromise the Apple brand and experience to get there.

  > $ sudo defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO

  Even worse this trash manipulation attempt pushes people to run commands like this which is a terrible idea leaving your machine entirely open if you accidentally run something from a spoof'd URL, or a script that managed to pose as a PDF document or an image.

  Quarantine is a great tech, I don't see why it can't just be honest about being for security and that implications of running unsigned apps. Instead of it being used as a tool to try and get 30% cut of an app.