App translocation, officially known as Gatekeeper path randomisation, comes up from time-to-time. The best resource to explain it, WWDC 2016 Session 706 What’s New in Security, is no longer available from Apple so I thought I’d post some notes here (r. 105455698 ). Questions or comments? Start a new thread here on DevForums, applying the Gatekeeper tag so that I see it. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com" App Translocation Notes Gatekeeper path randomisation, more commonly known as app translocation, is a security feature on macOS 10.12 and later. When you run a newly downloaded app, the system executes the app from a randomised path. This prevents someone from taking an app that loads code from an app-relative path and repackaging it to load malicious code. IMPORTANT The best way to prevent your app from being tricked into loading malicious code is to enable library validation. You get this by default once you enable the hardened runtime. Do not disable library validation unless your app needs to load in-process plug-ins from other third-party developers. If you have an in-process plug-in model, consider migrating to ExtensionKit. The exact circumstances where the system translocates an app is not documented and has changed over time. It’s best to structure your app so that it works regardless of whether it’s translocated or not. App Translocation Compatibility Most apps run just fine when translocated. However, you can run into problems if you load resources relative to your app bundle. For example, consider a structure like this: MyApp.app Templates/ letter.myapp envelope.myapp birthday card.myapp Such an app might try to find the Templates directory by: Getting the path to the main bundle Navigating from that using a relative path This won’t work if the app is translocated. The best way to avoid such problems is to embed these resources inside your app (following the rules in Placing Content in a Bundle, of course). If you need to make them easily accessible to the user, add your own UI for that. For a great example of this, run Pages and choose File > New. App Translocation Limits There is no supported way to detect if your app is being run translocated. If you search the ’net you’ll find lots of snippets that do this, but they all rely on implementation details that could change. There is no supported way to determine the original (untranslocated) path of your app. Again, you’ll find lots of unsupported techniques for this out there on the ’net. Use them at your peril! If you find yourself using these unsupported techniques, it’s time to sit down and rethink your options. Your best option here is to make your app work properly when translocated, as illustrated by the example in the previous section. App Translocation in Action The following steps explain how to trigger app translocation on macOS 13.0. Keep in mind that the specifics of app translocation are not documented and have changed over time, so you might see different behaviour on older or new systems: To see app translocation in action: Use Safari to download an app that’s packaged as a zip archive. My go-to choice for such tests is NetNewsWire, but any app will work. Safari downloads the zip archive to the Downloads folder and then unpacks it (assuming your haven’t tweaked your preferences). In Finder, navigate to the Downloads folder and launch the app. When Gatekeeper presents its alert, approve the launch. In Terminal, look at the path the app was launched from: % ps xw | grep NetNewsWire … /private/var/folders/wk/bqx_nk71457_g9yry9c_2ww80000gp/T/AppTranslocation/C863FADC-A711-49DD-B4D0-6BE679EE225D/d/NetNewsWire.app/Contents/MacOS/NetNewsWire Note how the path isn’t ~/Downloads but something random. That’s why the official name for this feature is Gatekeeper path randomisation. Quit the app. Use Finder to relaunch it. Repeat step 5: % ps xw | grep NetNewsWire … /private/var/folders/wk/bqx_nk71457_g9yry9c_2ww80000gp/T/AppTranslocation/C863FADC-A711-49DD-B4D0-6BE679EE225D/d/NetNewsWire.app/Contents/MacOS/NetNewsWire The path is still randomised. Quit the app again. Use the Finder to move it to the desktop. And relaunch it. And repeat step 5 again: % ps xw | grep NetNewsWire … /Users/quinn/Desktop/NetNewsWire.app/Contents/MacOS/NetNewsWire The act of moving the app has cleared the state that triggered app translocation.

So we are building a Tauri app and I have no been able to get our App to be Notarized using Developer ID. We have a ticket open for 3 months now. Can anyone help me out here? { "logFormatVersion": 1, "jobId": "e2ec4d13-bb83-41d4-a497-ba80cf830af1", "status": "Rejected", "statusSummary": "Team is not yet configured for notarization. Please contact Developer Programs Support at developer.apple.com under the topic Development and Technical / Other Development or Technical Questions.", "statusCode": 7000, "archiveFilename": "HIDDEN", "uploadDate": "2026-01-23T16:13:37.589Z", "sha256": "fd52815d5edf14b66b25529e89c207b2acff2c41642261e1049a479f19f2b72f", "ticketContents": null, "issues": null } How do we escalate to engineering team? Sincerely, Nash Gadre https://camouflagenetworks.com

I'm trying to notarize an application for the first time & it's stuck for more than 24 hours now. I ended up submitting the same app more than 5 times, but all are stuck in waiting state. There is no visibility into what's happening & whenever i check the status it just shows as "In Progress". How can i expedite this process ?

id: a6f37169-19a7-4abc-b086-3f298866f65d id: 596e3ca4-e8a6-4ba9-9ac7-cf07a430eebb In Progress from 2026-01-21T05:56:24.160Z、2026-01-21T05:55:45.032Z for 30 hours

Hi, I am using a carrier account and have been able to use com.apple.CommCenter.fine-grained entitlement successfully for the past few years. Currently I am trying to use this entitlement in an app clip. but recieving the following error: Validation failed (409) Invalid entitlement. App clip 'xyz.app/AppClips/appClip.app' contains a code signing entitlement 'com.apple.coretelephony.SimAuthentication.allow' that is not supported. Remove the 'com.apple.coretelephony.SimAuthentication.allow' entitlement. (ID: 87f67652-0e22-441d-b7ec-ea4baacab39e) NSUnderlyingError : Validation failed (-19241) Invalid entitlement. App clip 'xyz.app/AppClips/appClip.app' contains a code signing entitlement 'com.apple.coretelephony.SimAuthentication.allow' that is not supported. Remove the 'com.apple.coretelephony.SimAuthentication.allow' entitlement. status : 409 Is it possible to use com.apple.CommCenter.fine-grained entitlement in an app clip? if so do you have any suggestion how to resolve this error?

Dears, this is my first ever piece of code on Mac. I wanted to try ShazamKit. I created App Id and enabled App Service ShazamKit. I properly configured my app (a very small test app) with the proper boundle id, Team and entitlements file. I keep receiving this error in the Signing in section: Automatic signing failed Xcode failed to provision this target. Please address the following issues preventing automatic signing from creating a valid profile. Entitlement com.apple.developer.shazamkit not found and could not be included in profile. This likely is not a valid entitlement and should be removed from your entitlements file I noticed the message is mentioning "profile"...does it refer to a "Profile" as in "Certificate"/"Identifiers"/"Devices"/"Profiles"/"Keys"/"Services" option? I did not create any "Profile". I just enabled the App Service under "Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles"=>"Identifiers"=>"Edit your App ID Configuration"=>"App Services" Thx!

base" : 6481543168, "size" : 5134811136, "uuid" : "7bc5af5f-1e86-3b36-9036-16025c72cb70" }, "vmSummary" : "ReadOnly portion of Libraries: Total=1.0G resident=0K(0%) swapped_out_or_unallocated=1.0G(100%)\nWritable regions: Total=28.8M written=369K(1%) resident=369K(1%) swapped_out=0K(0%) unallocated=28.5M(99%)\n\n VIRTUAL REGION \nREGION TYPE SIZE COUNT (non-coalesced) \n=========== ======= ======= \nActivity Tracing 256K 1 \nAttributeGraph Data 1024K 1 \nCoreAnimation 48K 3 \nDispatch continuations 6144K 1 \nFoundation 16K 1 \nKernel Alloc Once 32K 1 \nMALLOC 16.8M 10 \nMALLOC guard page 3760K 4 \nSTACK GUARD 64K 4 \nStack 2640K 4 \n__AUTH 3975K 362 \n__AUTH_CONST 60.1M 643 \n__CTF 824 1 \n__DATA 28.6M 604 \n__DATA_CONST 24.9M 650 \n__DATA_DIRTY 4800K 581 \n__FONT_DATA 2352 1 \n__INFO_FILTER 8 1 \n__LINKEDIT 188.3M 7 \n__OBJC_RO 84.3M 1 \n__OBJC_RW 3177K 1 \n__TEXT 839.6M 666 \n__TPRO_CONST 128K 2 \nmapped file 32.7M 3 \npage table in kernel 369K 1 \nshared memory 80K 4 \n=========== ======= ======= \nTOTAL 1.3G 3558 \n", "legacyInfo" : { "threadTriggered" : { "queue" : "com.apple.main-thread" } }, "logWritingSignature" : "96bc482de9d7d2e828b9b488a2feab6193d3c188", "bug_type" : "309", "roots_installed" : 0, "trmStatus" : 1, "trialInfo" : { "rollouts" : [ ], "experiments" : [

Multiple notarization submissions have been stuck at "In Progress" status for over 2 days with no resolution or error: 4996643b-4512-4025-9648-028fbafca82f - submitted Jan 18 b6db6cd0-dad7-4a8e-b1fc-379467c1086d - submitted Jan 17 88f269c1-56ea-4404-98ba-edbe9a05b3d2 - submitted Jan 19 No logs available (notarytool log returns "not yet available"). The submissions were uploaded successfully and received submission IDs. Is there a known issue with the notarization service?

Hi, My certificates expired and I created new ones. But now Xcode shows me in Apple Accounts status of Mac App Distribution that the Missing Private... Howto fix the missing private key? I need to sign a .pkg for upload with Transporter. Further I generated a CSR for App License Delivery ALD certificates. https://developer.apple.com/help/account/certificates/create-a-certificate-signing-request/ And with App Store Connected I created new certificates. In Xcode I had to remove the Apple Account and add it again, after altering currency. This procedure was described somewhere because Xcode was not able to connect my account. This is fixed now.

We have a command line script that runs xcodebuild to make an archive, then runs xcodebuild again to export the archive to make an ipa, and then runs "altool --validate-app" to check that everything will be fine for a subsequent upload to the app store. This has been working fine for a few years but recently stopped working and we cannot figure out why. The validation fails with this error: ERROR: [altool.105912F20] Validation failed (409) Invalid Provisioning Profile. The provisioning profile included in the com. bundle [Payload/.app] is invalid. [Missing code-signing certificate]. A distribution provisioning profile should be used when uploading apps to App Store Connect. (ID: ) The project is configured with 'Automatically manage signing' unchecked, and the profile was created on developer.apple.com/account/resources/profiles and the matching profile magically appears in the "Provisioning Profile" drop down in Xcode. The profile was created with two certificates checked, but examining the embedded.mobileprovision profile that ends up in the compiled ipa payload it appears to contain 19 certificates (probably all of them for this org?). Is there a way to find out which certificate is missing exactly? And once identified is it a case of adding it to the profile used during compilation to fix this? Ancillary question: why does the embedded.mobileprovision file contain so many certificates, and how does xcodebuild decide which ones it includes there?

I can't upload my macOS app to app store connect. Each time i try to upload, i see this message: Provisioning profile failed qualification Profile doesn't support App Groups. An empty app without an app group uploads fine, but if i add an app group to it, it does not upload.

Hello! I need help with the following issue. I can't create a provisioning profile. The following error message appears: The following devices are either already present and have not been modified, or they contain invalid identifiers. I'm a beginner and have been struggling with this issue for a month and a half. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi everyone!! I am submitting an App for Notarization for the first time, I have several attempts, some returned invalid and other show In Progress for more than 8 hours. Is that normal? I addressed the issues that make the other ones Invalid. Thanks so much!

We are trying to notarize a MacOS app on our paid developer business account for the past 3 weeks. After many hours of processing, we received the following error: Team is not yet configured for notarization. Please contact Developer Programs Support at developer.apple.com under the topic Development and Technical / Other Development or Technical Questions.", "statusCode": 7000, Has anyone else experienced this issue and if so, how was it resolved? We have reached out to support to ask them to enable this configuration and received no reply. Any advice or guidance would be appreciated.

Hi, I'm running into a weird notarization issue and wanted to see if anyone else has seen something similar. I have one main macOS app that keeps doing the following: The notarization sits in "In Progress" for a few days Then it flips to "Rejected" with error code 7000 The notarytool log shows no issues and no ticket info At the same time, smaller test apps on the same Apple Developer account notarize. They do take around 2-3 days though. So it doesn't seem like an account or certificate problem. It looks like something about this specific app causes it to go into a long review and then fail with that vague 7000 error. The app is fairly large (Python + Qt, lots of bundled libraries), so I'm wondering if that triggers deeper scanning or some kind of policy check. Has anyone else seen: Multi day notarization jobs? Error 7000 that only affects one particular app? Rejections with no "issues" listed? If so, did you find a way around it? Also for context, my Apple Developer account was created recently I have contacted Apple Support already but no response yet and it's been 6 days. Thanks!

Hi, I have an app built in Unity that I am trying to sign an notarize for distribution. I can successfully codesign the app and it runs properly. But after successfully notarizing the app, the app stops opening. My process is as follows: # codesign the app. omitting "--deep" "--option runtime" or both will result in notarization failing codesign --force --deep --verify --verbose --option runtime --sign "Developer ID Application: ORG NAME (ZZZZZZZZZ)" path/to/app.app # create notarization submission zip /usr/bin/ditto -c -k --keepParent path/to/app.app path/to/app.zip # submit for notarization xcrun notarytool submit --wait path/to/app.zip -v --apple-id apple@id.com --password "aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa" --team-id "ZZZZZZZZZ" Notarization seems to succeed. Running: spctl -a -vvv -t install path/to/app.app -returns: path/to/app.app: accepted source=Notarized Developer ID origin=Developer ID Application: JOHN DOE (ZZZZZZZZZ) The Problem: Before code signature, the app runs normally After code signature, the app runs normally After notarization, the app hangs indefinitely on opening. It stays in the Dock until force quit. The app does not create its main window. There are no Gatekeeper warnings or pop-up windows. Additional Information: The second time I attempt to open the application I get a pop-up warning me that the app was force-quit while opening windows. This happens whether or not I have used xcrun stapler to staple the notarization to the app This happens whether I run the app from the terminal, by double clicking on the .app package, or by running the Unix Executable within Contents/MacOS/ Any idea how I can debug this and figure out what's going wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi! I've been scratching my brain for a few days now to no avail. I have a Perl project that I need to embed within my app. Perl includes a pp command (https://metacpan.org/pod/pp) which takes the runtime binary and then slaps the Perl code at the end of the binary itself which in brings some woes in a sense that the binary then needs to be "fixed" (https://github.com/rschupp/PAR-Packer/tree/master/contrib/pp_osx_codesign_fix) by removing the linker-provided signature and fixing LINKEDIT and LC_SYMTAB header sections of the binary. Nevertheless, I've successfully gotten the binary built, fixed up and codesigned it via codesign -s '$CS' mytool (where $CS is the codesigning identity). I can verify the signature as valid using codesign -v --display mytool: Identifier=mytool Format=Mach-O thin (arm64) CodeDirectory v=20400 size=24396 flags=0x0(none) hashes=757+2 location=embedded Signature size=4820 Signed Time=5. 1. 2026 at 8:54:53 PM Info.plist=not bound TeamIdentifier=XXXXXXX Sealed Resources=none Internal requirements count=1 size=188 It runs without any issues in Terminal, which is great. As I need to incorporate this binary in my app which is sandboxed, given my experience with other binaries that I'm including in the app, I need to codesign the binary with entitlements com.apple.security.app-sandbox and com.apple.security.inherit. So, I run: codesign -s '$CS' --force --entitlements ./MyTool.entitlements --identifier com.charliemonroe.mytool mytool ... where the entitlements file contains only the two entitlements mentioned above. Now I add the binary to the Xcode project, add it to the copy resources phase and I can confirm that it's within the bundle and that it's codesigned: codesign -vvvv --display MyApp.app/Contents/Resources/mytool Identifier=com.xxx.xxx.xxx Format=Mach-O thin (arm64) CodeDirectory v=20500 size=24590 flags=0x10000(runtime) hashes=757+7 location=embedded VersionPlatform=1 VersionMin=1703936 VersionSDK=1704448 Hash type=sha256 size=32 CandidateCDHash sha256=0a9f93af81e8e5cb286c3df6e638b2f78ab83a9e CandidateCDHashFull sha256=0a9f93af81e8e5cb286c3df6e638b2f78ab83a9edf463ce45d1cd3f89a6a4a00 Hash choices=sha256 CMSDigest=0a9f93af81e8e5cb286c3df6e638b2f78ab83a9edf463ce45d1cd3f89a6a4a00 CMSDigestType=2 Executable Segment base=0 Executable Segment limit=32768 Executable Segment flags=0x1 Page size=16384 CDHash=0a9f93af81e8e5cb286c3df6e638b2f78ab83a9e Signature size=4800 Authority=Apple Development: XXXXXX (XXXXXX) Authority=Apple Worldwide Developer Relations Certification Authority Authority=Apple Root CA Signed Time=9. 1. 2026 at 5:12:22 PM Info.plist=not bound TeamIdentifier=XXXXX Runtime Version=26.2.0 Sealed Resources=none Internal requirements count=1 size=196 codesign --display --entitlements :- MyApp.app/Contents/Resources/mytool <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "https://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"><plist version="1.0"><dict><key>com.apple.security.app-sandbox</key><true/><key>com.apple.security.inherit</key><true/></dict></plist> All seems to be in order! But not to Gatekeeper... Attempting to run this using the following code: let process = Process() process.executableURL = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "mytool", withExtension: nil)! process.arguments = arguments try process.run() process.waitUntilExit() Results in failure: process.terminationStatus == 255 Console shows the following issues: default 17:12:40.686604+0100 secinitd mytool[88240]: root path for bundle "<private>" of main executable "<private>" default 17:12:40.691701+0100 secinitd mytool[88240]: AppSandbox request successful error 17:12:40.698116+0100 kernel exec of /Users/charliemonroe/Library/Containers/com.charliemonroe.MyApp/Data/tmp/par-636861726c69656d6f6e726f65/cache-9c78515c29320789b5a543075f2fa0f8072735ae/mytool denied since it was quarantined by MyApp and created without user consent, qtn-flags was 0x00000086 Quarantine, hum? So I ran: xattr -l MyApp.app/Contents/Resources/mytool None listed. It is a signed binary within a signed app. There are other binaries that are included within the app and run just fine exactly this way (most of them built externally using C/C++ and then codesigned exectly as per above), so I really don't think it's an issue with the app's sandbox setup... Is there anyone who would be able to help with this? Thank you in advance!

I double-click it, and it doesn't install. I drag it to the provisioning profile folder, and it gets deleted immediately. It's an Apple Developer problem. I've already wiped my Mac clean twice and reinstalled everything, and I'm still having this problem.

Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone can share their experience or offer advice on entitlement request timelines. I previously had two bundle IDs approved for an app I'm testing via TestFlight - both were approved within a few days. I recently submitted a request for a third bundle ID (JMSHRM8W5J), and after realizing I may not have included enough detail, I submitted a follow-up request (XS2QYC59UU) with more context. It's now been almost three weeks, which is significantly longer than my earlier approvals - though I recognize some of that time included the holidays. A few questions for the community: Has anyone experienced longer wait times for additional entitlements on an existing project (with approved entitlements)? Did submitting a second request help or potentially slow things down? Is there anything I should include in a request to improve chances of quick approval? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!

I've tried to notarize my app recently and got the error:{ "logFormatVersion": 1, "jobId": "...", "status": "Rejected", "statusSummary": "Team is not yet configured for notarization", "statusCode": 7000, "archiveFilename": "myapp.dmg", "uploadDate": "2019-06-20T06:24:53Z", "sha256": "...", "ticketContents": null, "issues": null }I've never heard about "team configuration for notarization" previously. What are the steps to resolve that issue?Thanks in advance.