You’ve likely encountered Gatekeeper at some point, even if you didn’t know it by name: Gatekeeper is the feature at work when OS X tells you that a particular application can’t be opened “because it is from an unidentified developer,” and it requires various workarounds for users looking for temporary relief but who are not willing to disable the feature entirely.Īlthough useful for many Mac owners, those who need to frequently access third party apps from unregistered developers have generally made disabling Gatekeeper one of their first tasks when upgrading or setting up a new Mac. The theory behind the feature is that by restricting the source of applications that users can open or launch on their Mac, the chances of a user inadvertently downloading and executing viruses or malware can be significantly reduced.
How to Permanently Disable Gatekeeper in OS X El CapitanĪs we’ve previously covered, Gatekeeper is a security feature in OS X that prevents the user from launching apps that are either not from the Mac App Store or from unverified Mac developers.
