Introduction

today when i opened my laptop, to start working, one of my preferred productivity app didn’t start, i opened it using open -a , from /Applications folder using Finder, but nothing seemed to work, i returned to an older version, it worked properly; after that i tried to update another app by downloading the dmg than copy/paste under /Applications folder, the same error as for the first app happened again, definitely i have to try to find a fix.

after thinking a little, trying opening the apps from the terminal to see error messages, didn’t help at all open -a or /Applications/APPNAME.app/contents/MacOS/APPNAME, unlike linux opening the app from terminal didn’t show any helpful error message.

after some googling, i stumbled upon 🔗, which give me a hint, the macOS Console.app

How to fix it

shortly, how i proceeded:

1. i opened the Console app
2. i clicked on system.log under Reports on the left sidebar of the Console app
3. i typed the name of app in the top search field of Console app
4. i opened the app again using Launchpad or from /Applications folder using Finder
5. read the messages with the timestamp close to when you opened the app

voila, now i get errors on the Console that can give me a lead on how to fix the problem

removing service since it exited with consistent failure - OS_REASON_CODESIGNING | When validating /Applications/APPNAME.app/Contents/MacOS/APPNAME

.... Binary is improperly signed

it’s a problem with codesignature, it’s something that i faced before, normaly codesign the app will resolve the problem and it can be done from terminal using:

sudo codesign --force --deep --sign "/Applications/APPNAME.app/Contents/MacOS/APPNAME"

N.B: some time you need to execute the above command on multiple file because the app has Dependencies that are not properly signed, for that repeat the process described above until all error messages go away.

Just one thing to keep in mind, on MacOS Console.app is your friend