Gatekeeper exists on your Mac to prevent installations of any unauthorized apps on your Mac. These apps contain the ones that have been downloaded from outside the official Mac App Store. If you have not adjusted the settings, you will see a prompt appearing every time you try to install one of these apps. You can then decide what you wish to do with the app, whether to install or not.
If you happen to install a number of these apps and would like for Gatekeeper to not annoy you with a warning message every time you double-click an out-of-store app on your Mac, you can turn off the Gatekeeper feature forever on your Mac.
Here’s how you can go about disabling Gatekeeper forever on a Mac.
Note: Gatekeeper is a security feature in Mac to keep you protected from external unauthorized apps. This article doesn’t advocate that you should turn it off. Instead, it only shows you the way to do it. You should use your own discretion while doing so.
Turning Off Gatekeeper Forever on a Mac
You do not need a third-party app to get the job done as a simple command from Terminal will work.
1. Launch Terminal by clicking on Launchpad in your dock and searching for and clicking on Terminal.
2. When Terminal launches, type in the following command and press Enter. It should disable Gatekeeper permanently on your Mac.
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security GKAutoRearm -bool NO
3. You will be asked to enter your password in order to allow the command to make changes to your system. Do so and press Enter.
4. If you entered the correct password for your account, you will not get any confirmation message, and you will simply see your username. That means the trick worked, and Gatekeeper has been turned off forever. From now on whenever you install an app from outside the Mac App Store, you will not be asked whether you wish to open the app or not.
Should you wish to enable the feature in the future, you can do so using a command and the Terminal app. Here’s how to do that.
Turning Gatekeeper Back On on a Mac
Again, you will only need the Terminal app and no third-party apps.
1. Click on Launchpad in your dock, search for and click on Terminal, and it will launch for you.
2. Type in the following command into Terminal and press Enter. It should enable Gatekeeper on your Mac.
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security GKAutoRearm -bool YES
3. Enter in your account password and press Enter to allow the changes to be made.
4. After entering the correct password, you will not get a confirmation message or anything like that. Instead, you will see a blank line to enter a new command. That means the command worked, and Gatekeeper is back up and running on your Mac. You will now get prompts whenever you install an app from outside the Mac App Store.
Conclusion
If Gatekeeper has been annoying you by its prompts, you can use the above method to turn it off permanently on your Mac. Please comment below if you have any questions.
Subscribe to our newsletter!
Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox
Sign up for all newsletters.
By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and European users agree to the data transfer policy. We will not share your data and you can unsubscribe at any time. Subscribe
Mahesh Makvana
Mahesh Makvana is a freelance tech writer who’s written thousands of posts about various tech topics on various sites. He specializes in writing about Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android tech posts. He’s been into the field for last eight years and hasn’t spent a single day without tinkering around his devices.
Comments are closed