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tonsky/unquarantine

A menubar app that automatically removes quarantine flag from all your downloads

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Stars
28
Forks
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Watchers
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Open issues
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Contributors
1
Language
Swift
License
MIT License
Default branch
main
Created Sep 27, 2026Updated Sep 27, 2026

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README

Unquarantine

A small macOS menu bar app that monitors your ~/Downloads folder and removes the com.apple.quarantine attribute from new files.

Q: Why? A: Apple makes it unnecessarily difficult to distribute macOS apps without paying them a $100 ransom every year. Many good developers refuse to play that game, and I am here for their apps. Luckily, all it takes to get them running is removing the quarantine flag.

Q: Is it safe? A: That depends on what you download. Unquarantine removes quarantine flags automatically; it doesn’t check whether an app is safe. Only run software you trust.

How to use

Requires macOS 13 or later.

  1. Download Unquarantine.zip.
  2. Unzip.
  3. Ironically, remove the quarantine attribute by running:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Unquarantine.app
  1. Move the app to /Applications.
  2. Launch it.

Hopefully, this is the last time you’ll have to unquarantine anything.

Attributions

  • Idea by Grishka
  • Icon by Sergey Chickin