Question :

I have an app that I have been using in the past, and I now recently, I was in a situation where I needed that same app, so I downloaded the latest version and tried to install, but I get a message that reads “[app name] can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer”…

Isn’t there any option to install the software anyway ?

Answer :

Installing this app is being blocked by the Gatekeeper function that has been in MacOSX since the last versions of MacOSX 10.7 Lion (Gatekeeper was introduced with upgrade 10.7.5 to be exact).

More info on Gatekeeper can be found here.

If you have good experience with the product and you are sure you have downloaded the installer from a reliable source, you can install the app regardless of the warning.

To do so, do one of these :

– go to the icon of the app, right-click (option-click) on it, and select “Open” from the pulldown menu

– go to System Preferences, then to Security & Privacy, and in the window that opens, select the “General”-tab, then leave “Allow apps downloaded from:” at “Mac App Store and identified developers” ; beneath that, you will see a text “[app name] was blocked from opening because it is not from an identified developer”… there you should click on the “Open Anyway”-button… using that, the rest of the install-process will go as expected

Enjoy !