What you need to know

  • Apple has relaxed notarization required for macOS Catalina devices.
  • The deadline is now four months away — January 2020.
  • This should help developers having issues with adopting notarization.

Apple today announced it is relaxation some of the requirements of macOS Catalina notarization.

From Apple Developer Updates:

As a reminder, Mac software distributed outside the Mac App Store must be notarized by Apple in order to run on macOS Catalina. To make this transition easier and to protect users on macOS Catalina who continue to use older versions of software, we've adjusted the notarization prerequisites until January 2020.

You can now notarize Mac software that:

  • Doesn't have the Hardened Runtime capability enabled.
  • Has components not signed with your Developer ID.
  • Doesn't include a secure timestamp with your code-signing signature.
  • Was built with an older SDK.
  • Includes the com.apple.security.get-task-allow entitlement with the value set to any variation of true.

Notarization only applies to apps not distributed through the Mac App Store. It's an escalation of the previous developer certificate signing process.

Gatekeeper in macOS Catalina, as part of Apple's security precaution, wiil make sure apps are properly notarized before allowing them to run for the first time.

If an app was distributed through the App Store, then it does not require to notarization.

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