MacOS: “Positron” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

[burgerga]

System details:

Positron and OS details:

Positron Version: 2025.06.0 (Universal) build 48 Code - OSS Version: 1.99.0 Commit: 621d1ce8f7fecc9623e9ab59b36c62f23d626d3d Date: 2025-05-12T03:33:48.170Z Electron: 34.3.2 Chromium: 132.0.6834.210 Node.js: 20.18.3 V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0 OS: Darwin arm64 24.4.0

Describe the issue:

Perhaps not a Positron issue, but a MacOS issue with workaround:

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Download the dmg from the website or GitHub Releases

2. Install the dmg

3. Post-install MacOS will verify Positron and says

   “Positron” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

   with two buttons below: "Cancel" or "Move to Trash". Clicking "Cancel" will show the same error again, until you click "Move to Trash" which will uninstall Positron.

Expected or desired behavior:

1. Installing the dmg should just work

Workaround

Instead of clicking any button, go to the terminal and execute (see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253714860?sortBy=rank)

xattr -c /Applications/Positron.app

then click "Cancel" and opening Positron should work!

Perhaps this can be added to the README/documentation somewhere?

[tnederlof]

I had the same issue, xattr -c /Applications/Positron.app fixed it for me as well.

[jmcphers]

We've had several folks internally experience this; it often goes away after rebooting, trying several times, or using a workaround like the above. :-/

[royfrancis]

I got the same error when downloading 2025.09.0-139-arm64.dmg.

Error message

The xattr -c /Applications/Positron.app solution worked.

[rodrigosf672]

+1

and console for Python 3.13.5 kept being in a bad state (perhaps related?)

[emitanaka]

Same error for Positron-2025.10.1-4-universal.dmg for macOS 26.0.1. The above solution xattr -c /Applications/Positron.app worked for me, but since I am planning to use this for teaching next year, it would be great to have this work out of the box for the students. Thanks.

[rodrigosf672]

Thank you for sharing that, @emitanaka. I'll discuss this with the team.

---

The xattr -c /Applications/Positron.app solution worked for me as well, after I enabled the Terminal and Positron to make modifications to each other and to my machine.

[jthomasmock]

Happened temporarily for me on 2025.11.0 stable release. Restart resolved.