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CrossOver 19 Mac, and dealing with "[file] cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified"

There are a few forum posts about this already, but I wanted to share my experience, and the workaround I used to fix it.

For several programs, they will install fine, but once I go to run them (by double clicking on the icon within CrossOver), I will get one or more macOS errors about the "[file] cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified".

I'm given 2 options to deal with these errors:

  • Move to Trash or
  • Cancel

This is the same error you get when you download some perfectly safe Mac applications, and it is due to macOS's GateKeeper application. What makes this tricky is that the error is often not for the exact program you are trying to launch, but rather one of the many files the programs needs to run.

Selecting Cancel for each warning allows the program to open with no adverse effects. The only problem is that I have to click through the error messages every time I launch the program.

As a workaround, I opened the bottle's C: drive and for each file that was giving me the error, I did what I would have done with a Mac app giving me the same error: I CTRL-clicked it and selected Open. For file types with no default application on my Mac (e.g. .dll files), I selected Open With > Other... and then selected Visual Studio Code. I used Visual Studio Code, mostly because I knew it would at least try to open .dll files, even though it couldn't actually read the contents of the file.

After going through this for all of the files giving the error, I tried to open the program normally, and this time, I still got the same "cannot be opened..." error messages, but now I had 3 options to choose:

  • Move to Trash,
  • Open, and
  • Cancel

Selecting Open for all of the errors allows the program to launch, and the next time I launch it, I do not get the errors at all.

An easier approach I guess would be to set GateKeeper to allow apps downloaded from anywhere, at least temporarily, but that requires another process entirely. If anyone is interested, I can post how to allow apps from anywhere to open. I'm guessing if this is set, and the app runs once, you can then change your GateKeeper settings back to what they were before.

Please Note: This Forum is for non-application specific questions relating to installation/configuration of CrossOver. All application-specific posts to this Forum will be moved to their appropriate Compatibility Center Forum.

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