How to Fix a macOS Game Blocked by Gatekeeper

A macOS game Gatekeeper blocks is unsigned or unnotarized. Signing and notarizing fixes it. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Sign with a Developer ID

Code-sign the app (and its frameworks and helpers) with an Apple Developer ID certificate. An unsigned app is blocked, and players see an unidentified-developer or damaged warning.

2. Notarize with Apple

Submit the signed app to Apple's notary service, which scans it and issues a ticket. Notarization is required for Gatekeeper to trust apps distributed outside the Mac App Store.

3. Staple the ticket

Staple the notarization ticket to the app so Gatekeeper can verify it offline. Then players can open the game normally without the security block or workaround prompts.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.