Un-quarantine VST3/AU plugins on macOS

[dannytaurus]

Just leaving this here in case it helps anyone searching for quarantine issues on macOS.

Remove the quarantine flag on a VST3/AU plugin so you can move it between Macs while testing:

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/MyPlugin.component"
// or
xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine "/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/MyPlugin.vst3"

That's if they're in the standard location. If they're somewhere else, like the User folder, adpapt the file path.

[resonant]

@dannytaurus why does this issue happen?

[David Healey]

@resonant If you don't codesign your plugin then when you try to run it on another Mac the OS will flag it as potentially malicious and quarantine it.

[dannytaurus]

@resonant It happens when I'm doing test exports of a plugin and using it on a different Mac.

I'm not code-signing at this point of development, so macOS puts a quarantine flag on the binary.

This means other computers will see the plugin as quarantined and either show the "this file is corrupt and should be moved to the trash" style message or the DAW will fail to scan it properly, making it unusable.

If you remove the quarantine extended attribute with the terminal command, it makes it usable.

NOTE: this is only something to do while testing. It's not a practical solution to avoiding code-signing.

[resonant]

@David-Healey @dannytaurus Ok then, for a moment I thought it was giving this error even though it had code sign :)

By the way, I am using this method in such situations. It works for me: xattr -cr pathToPlugin

[dannytaurus]

@resonant Yes, your version clears all extended attributes on a file. Mine only clears the quarantine one.