Apple created the Gatekeeper program to help protect users from themselves. As they state in the Gatekeeper support page, “Some apps downloaded and installed from the Internet could adversely affect your Mac. Gatekeeper helps protect your Mac from such apps.” While this statement is true on the surface, Gatekeeper also denies extremely popular and trusted apps from being easily installed. 

Basically, any app that isn’t download from the App Store or been signed and verified by Apple will not be installed on your computer if Gatekeeper is enabled. So, if you would like to install apps from the internet with ease, while still keeping Gatekeeper enabled, keep on reading.

How to override Gatekeeper on your Mac with one click

While you can disable Gatekeeper by going to Settings -> Security and Privacy and make it so that you can download apps from “Anywhere” that does leave you vulnerable to anyone, including yourself, downloading apps on your computer freely.

This, of course, defeats the purpose of having security pre-installed to protect your not-so-cheap Mac. So, instead of doing that, you can quickly override the Gatekeeper app denial whenever you want to install and open a non-verified Mac app.

All you need to do is control-click on the app you want to open and choose Open from the pop-up menu.

The Gatekeeper warning will show up as usually, but you’ll notice that the text has changed and simply asks if you are sure you want to open the app in question. Just click Open one more time and your app will finally open up. Super easy, super fast.

Now, whenever you launch that same application you will not have to worry about Gatekeeper blocking it as you’ve basically white-listed from henceforth. You will be able to launch the app with a simple double-click. This quick Gatekeeper override is super convenient for folks that download apps that are not in the Mac App Store and trust the developer. That is a key point here; just because you can install apps without Gatekeeper blocking it doesn’t remove the due diligence you should have whenever downloading an app from an outside source.

So, let us know what you think of the Gatekeeper override in the comment section.