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MacOS Gatekeeper Notice

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© 2026 Obsvra. This document describes SpiceGrinder and is provided to help you evaluate and use it. It is not a license to reproduce, adapt, or use this material to build a competing product or service. Full terms: the SpiceGrinder EULA.

SpiceGrinder’s Mac build is ad-hoc signed, not notarized by Apple. Because of that, the first time you open the app, macOS Gatekeeper will show a warning instead of just launching it. This is expected, not a sign anything is broken.

What you’ll see

Double-clicking SpiceGrinder.app (or SpiceGrinder-Pro.app) shows a dialog like:

“SpiceGrinder” cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified.

with no “Open Anyway” option visible at first — closing that dialog is fine, it doesn’t prevent the next step.

How to open it anyway

Recommended — Right-click to open:

  1. In Finder, locate the app (usually in Applications or wherever you unzipped it).
  2. Right-click (or Control-click) the app icon and choose Open.
  3. A new dialog appears with an Open button this time (unlike the plain double-click warning). Click it.
  4. macOS remembers this choice — every launch after this one works like normal, including double-clicking.

If that doesn’t show an Open button (newer macOS versions):

  1. Try double-clicking the app once — it’ll show the same “cannot be opened” warning as above.
  2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to the Security section.
  3. You should see a note about SpiceGrinder being blocked, with an Open Anyway button next to it. Click it, then confirm in the dialog that follows.

Command line (advanced/technical users): the warning comes from a quarantine flag macOS attaches to anything downloaded from the internet. Removing it skips the dialog entirely:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/SpiceGrinder.app

Why this happens

Apple requires a Developer ID and a notarization step (Apple scanning the app and attaching an approval ticket) before Gatekeeper will trust an app by default. Obsvra is still in the process of registering for an Apple developer account. SpiceGrinder’s pre-release build is signed just enough to run on Apple Silicon, but skips that notarization step; the final release will be properly signed and notarized.