bliss and Catalina
October 24, 2019 in bliss by Dan Gravell
This month has seen the release of the latest version of macOS - Catalina. This is the first version featuring the new replacement for iTunes, Apple Music.
The release also includes a number of privacy improvements, such is Apple's current focus on security. This includes app notarization, whereby Apple verify an app downloaded and run on macOS has been verified as being safe. Unfortunately, old versions of bliss (including the next version, currently in beta) have not been notarized, so getting them to run requires a workaround.
Running old versions of bliss on macOS Catalina
If you try to run old versions of bliss, you'll get a message saying it cannot be opened. The easiest workaround is to:
- Right click the "bl" icon and click Open:
- You'll get the message that bliss cannot be started, something like:
- Click OK then... run bliss again! Right click the "bl" icon and click Open again. You'll get:
- This time, click Open.
bliss should now run and will do so 'normally' from now on; you can run the app by double-clicking it as before.
Another approach
Another approach is to temporarily disable Gatekeeper, the component that otherwise blocks bliss from running.
- Open Applications / Utilities / Terminal.
- Type (press ENTER at the end of the line):
sudo spctl --master-disable
- Now run bliss - it should start just fine.
- Finally, re-enable Gatekeeper:
sudo spctl --master-enable
You should now be able to close the Terminal.
Let me know if you have problems with either of these approaches!
The real fix
Those are just workarounds of course; the real fix is for bliss to be properly 'notarized'.
I'm pleased to report that initial tests have shown this works just fine (at the cost of a lot more complexity in our build process.... hrmph) and so hopefully this will work without the workaround above from the release-after-next (the current beta due for release next week does not include the notarization step in its build, so the workaround above must be followed.)
If you fancy giving an early access release a try, let us know!.
Thanks to Cédric Dhaenens for the image above.
