Apps not opening "Verifying"
Some of the apps on my MacBook Air (OS El Capitan) specifically my Grand Theft Auto are not opening because a prompt appears "Verifying (Name Of The App)". I've tried countless times to fix this but nothing has worked. Any suggestions on how might I fix this?
If you are sure that you downloaded the app installer from the official/verified source and that it has not been tempered with, you can skip the verification process altogether by removing the extended file attribute that causes FileVault to attempt to verify the application. Do this by executing the following command from terminal:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/app_name.app
The app_name.app is the name of the application you are changing the extended attributes on. In this case, GTA5.app.
The xattr command allows you to view and change extended file attributes. The -d flag indicates you are deleting the com.apple.quarantine attribute which is set on the application package. Any file with the extended attribute of com.apple.quarantine is verified by FileVault. This attribute is typically automatically set on downloaded files and files extracted from a tar or zip archive.
This verification ensures that the application is not tampered with, so I would consider re-downloading and re-installing any app that fails to verify.
If you have an installer package and you're sure it validates by checking the checksum or you have a backup and no data that would be sensitive if it's compromised - you can force the installer to run:
- .pkg for installer hangs on verify
But - again, you are disabling a safety feature, so I would back up your machine and data in case there's something going on with the safety system.
EDIT: It seems I had some fw rules on my router that blocked access to some apple servers (I set them up to run some tests a while ago). After removing the rules, all is well.
Just disable your network connection temporarily. I believe somethings's wrong with Apple's way to query their servers for potentially malicious software definitions.