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Opening it on macOS

macOS may refuse the first launch and call Plectrify damaged. It is not — the build is unnotarized. Here is what that means and the two ways past it.

What you will see

The first time you open Plectrify on macOS, the system may refuse it:

"Plectrify" is damaged and can't be opened.
You should move it to the Trash.

Nothing is damaged, and nothing is wrong with your download. That wording is what macOS says about any app it cannot check with Apple, whatever the reason — and it is the same sentence a genuinely corrupt file would get, which is why it is worth explaining rather than apologising for.

Why

Apple will vouch for an app only if its developer pays for an Apple Developer Program membership — currently 99 USD a year — and submits each build to Apple to be notarized. There is no free tier and no exemption for open-source projects.

Plectrify is written by one person and given away under the AGPL. Until there is a user base that justifies the yearly fee, the macOS build is signed but not notarized, so Gatekeeper has nothing from Apple to check it against and refuses it by default.

You can decide for yourself whether that is worth trusting. Two things help more than our say-so: the complete source is published for every release, and every download is published with a SHA-256 checksum you can verify (below).

Opening it anyway

Drag Plectrify to your Applications folder first — do this before either method, because clearing the quarantine flag applies to where the app is now, and moving it afterwards is one more step to repeat.

If macOS offers “Open Anyway”

  1. Open Plectrify once and let it be refused. Click Done or Cancel.
  2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
  3. Scroll to the Security section. A line names Plectrify as having been blocked.
  4. Click Open Anyway, and confirm with your password or Touch ID.
  5. Open Plectrify again. It launches, and never asks again.

You have to try to open it first — the button appears only after macOS has blocked something, and it clears within the hour, so do the two steps together.

On macOS 15 (Sequoia) and later, right-clicking the app and choosing Open no longer works as a shortcut for this. It was the standard advice for years and is still repeated all over the web; ignore it and use System Settings.

If it says “damaged”, or there is no Open Anyway button

Then macOS is refusing before it offers you the choice, and the quarantine flag has to be removed directly. Open Terminal (Applications → Utilities) and paste:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Plectrify.app

Press Return. There is no output — that means it worked. Open Plectrify normally afterwards.

That command removes the “downloaded from the internet” marker macOS attaches to files your browser saves. It changes nothing inside the app and affects no other software.

Verifying your download first

If you would rather check the file before running any of this, every release publishes a checksum beside the disk image. Download Plectrify-<version>-macos-arm64.dmg.sha256 from the releases page, then run:

shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Plectrify-<version>-macos-arm64.dmg

Compare the long hex string it prints with the one in the .sha256 file. If they match, the file you have is byte-for-byte the file that was published.

Two things to expect afterwards

Microphone permission comes back with each update. macOS recognises an unnotarized app by the exact contents of its build, so every new version looks like a new app and asks for microphone access again. Grant it — Plectrify needs it to hear your guitar, and it records nothing. A notarized build would keep the permission across updates.

Nothing else changes. Plugins, rigs, patches and your audio settings are unaffected by any of this. It is a one-time gate on opening the app, not a limitation on running it.

The alternative: build it yourself

Software you compile on your own machine was never downloaded, so it carries no quarantine flag and Gatekeeper never asks. If you have Xcode Command Line Tools, CMake and Node installed, pnpm app --dist produces a running build from a clone of the repository. See the README for the full list.

When this goes away

The moment the project can cover the membership, macOS builds become notarized and this page becomes history — the app will open with no warning at all. If you would like to speed that up, the repository is the place to look.