Apple on Tuesday reminded developers about upcoming notarization requirements for Mac Apps distributed outside of the company’s Mac App Store. Such apps must be notarized by Apple in order to run on the upcoming macOS Catalina operating system, due for release this fall.
However, to ease the transition, and to protect users on macOS Catalina who continue to use older versions of software, the company has adjusted the notarization prerequisites until January 2020.
Developers can now obtain app notarization for apps that don’t meet certain previously announced requirements.
From the Apple developer website:
You can now notarize Mac software that:
– Doesn’t have the Hardened Runtime capability enabled.
– Has components not signed with your Developer ID.
– Doesn’t include a secure timestamp with your code-signing signature.
– Was built with an older SDK.
– Includes the com.apple.security.get-task-allow entitlement with the value set to any variation of true.
Apple had previously been requiring new software distributed with a Developer ID outside of the Mac App Store to be notarized to run on macOS Mojave 10.14.5 and later.
The notarization is intended to further protect Mac users from malicious and harmful apps. Apple provides trusted non Mac App Store developers with Developer IDs that will allow the macOS Gatekeeper function to install non Mac App Store apps.
More information on notarization is available on Apple’s developer site.