Help · macOS

macOS won't open Pitop Viewer?

That's expected, and nothing is wrong with your Mac. Here's why, and three ways to open it — about 15 seconds.

Easiest: Homebrew

Homebrew installs the app and clears the block for you. Nothing else to do afterwards.

brew tap christophepicot/tap https://gitlab.com/christophepicot/homebrew-tap
brew trust christophepicot/tap
brew install --cask pitop-viewer

No Homebrew? Skip to the next method — you don't need to install it for this.

No terminal: System Settings

Double-click Pitop Viewer. macOS shows a warning — dismiss it.
Open System Settings › Privacy & Security.
Scroll down to the security section: a message mentions Pitop Viewer.
Click Open Anyway, then confirm.

Once only. Later launches behave normally. On macOS Sequoia the old right-click › Open trick no longer works — Apple removed it.

One command

If the terminal doesn't scare you, this line removes the quarantine attribute:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Pitop Viewer.app"

Run it after dragging the app into your Applications folder.

Why it's blocked

Pitop Viewer is signed, but not notarized by Apple. Notarization requires a paid Apple Developer account at $99 a year, and this app is a free, open-source side project. So macOS can't check its origin with Apple, and blocks it to be safe.

The source is public on GitLab, and the app makes no network calls beyond its update check.

Still stuck?

Open an issue on GitLab with your macOS version. I answer.

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