Inquiry About Using notarytool on a Separate Machine for Notarizing macOS Apps

Hello,

I am currently developing a macOS application using macOS 10.15.7 and Xcode 11.1. My application is distributed directly to users via a server, not through the App Store. I recently came across the following announcement:

"Starting November 1, 2023, the Apple notary service no longer accepts uploads from altool or Xcode 13 or earlier. If you notarize your Mac software with the Apple notary service using the altool command-line utility or Xcode 13 or earlier, you need to transition to the notarytool command-line utility or upgrade to Xcode 14 or later."

Given this change, I understand that I need to use notarytool or upgrade to Xcode 14 or later for notarization. However, upgrading my current development environment is not feasible at the moment.

I would like to know if it is possible to build my application on my current environment (macOS 10.15.7 and Xcode 11.1) and then transfer the built application to a separate machine running macOS 11.0 or later with Xcode 14 or later installed, to perform the notarization using notarytool.

Could you please confirm if this approach is acceptable and if there are any specific steps or considerations I should be aware of when using notarytool on a separate machine for notarizing my application?

Thank you for your assistance.

Best regards, WJohn

Answered by DTS Engineer in 794384022
Could you please confirm if this approach is acceptable

That should work just fine. There is no requirement that you notarise from the machine that you build on.

However, you may not need to do this. In general, it’s fine to extract notarytool from a new version of Xcode and use it on an old version of macOS. It’s been a while since I tried this, but I’ve definitely run notarytool on macOS 10.15. IIRC I extracted that tool from Xcode 13.

Oh, hey, after some digging I was able to find the DevForums thread that described what I did.

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Accepted Answer
Could you please confirm if this approach is acceptable

That should work just fine. There is no requirement that you notarise from the machine that you build on.

However, you may not need to do this. In general, it’s fine to extract notarytool from a new version of Xcode and use it on an old version of macOS. It’s been a while since I tried this, but I’ve definitely run notarytool on macOS 10.15. IIRC I extracted that tool from Xcode 13.

Oh, hey, after some digging I was able to find the DevForums thread that described what I did.

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Inquiry About Using notarytool on a Separate Machine for Notarizing macOS Apps
 
 
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