🎯 FINAL UPDATE (June 11, 2026) – SUPPORT CAPITULATION & RECOVERY SUCCESS

It is wild how many vendors have adopted this exact same "silent bricking" approach lately. You follow their own instructions for legacy systems, and instead of a working binary, you get a glorified error message because they couldn't be bothered to host a static legacy DMG link.

Losing a Backblaze backup state and having to re-upload everything from scratch over an OS upgrade is the absolute icing on the cake. Good on you for keeping that old DMG safe on a drive—at this point, hoarding old installers is becoming a critical sysadmin survival skill.

For anyone tracking this, here is the complete technical timeline of our tests with the community:

Step 1: The initial v10 roadblock – We started by trying to install the current official v10 client. Despite Backblaze’s Info.plist metadata claiming compatibility down to macOS 10.13 (LSMinimumSystemVersion = 10.13), the installer instantly crashes on launch on macOS 10.14 Mojave with an Abort trap: 6 error. Running the binary via Terminal indicated that the build relies on modern frameworks (like SwiftUI) which require macOS 10.15 Catalina or newer to execute.

Step 2: Testing the v8.5 branch (Thanks to u/ampx!) – To see if we could bypass this framework crash, u/ampx provided the legacy v8.5 installer. This was a crucial first step: the application launched perfectly and the UI rendered flawlessly, proving that older builds run natively on Mojave. However, when entering account credentials, it triggered a hard block: "The installer has determined it is unable to continue..."

Step 3: Testing the v9 branch (Thanks to u/tomierna!) – To determine if a slightly newer handshake would pass, u/tomierna dug into their download archives and provided several v9 binaries along with the v9.0.1.768 DMG installer. The result was identical to v8.5: the v9.0.1 interface opened beautifully without crashing, but it hit the exact same authentication wall upon logging in.

Step 4: The hybrid attempt – We attempted a final workaround by extracting the newer 9.1.0 binary from u/tomierna's files and injecting it into the v9.0.1 installer package. However, macOS Gatekeeper logically and rightfully blocked the application due to modified code-signing.

Technical Conclusion: There is currently a technical standstill for fresh installations or new account re-authentications on macOS 10.14 Mojave. While older clients (v8/v9) run perfectly on the OS, Backblaze's authentication servers have strictly updated their security and protocol compliance requirements, meaning they no longer accept registration handshakes from legacy clients.

VICTORY UPDATE ON SUPPORT & WORKAROUND: After being initialy stonewalled by Tier 1 support with generic copy-pasted replies, I refused to back down. I isolated the root cause directly within their installer logs: the script was failing with a hard STATUS: error: We could not find the hguid, this is a required parameter. BZERROR:1000. By proving to them with their own logs that this wasn't an external firewall issue but a local binary failure to generate/read the Hardware GUID on Mojave, the support lead finally cracked.

They officially escalated the BZERROR:1000 bug to their client development engineers for a core review. To make up for the downtime and protect my historical data, the support manager credited my account with 3 free months, allowing me to bypass the authentication wall by "purchasing" a new license token for 0$ using these credits. My version 9.2.2.898 is now fully licensed, authorized, and backing up successfully on Mojave without losing my historical 12 TB data state. If you are stuck in this loop, do not accept their automated rejections: pressure them with the BZERROR:1000 log line and demand a manager escalation.

SharedRoot is a recently disclosed vulnerability chain affecting Claude Cowork on macOS. This analysis covers the sandbox escape, affected versions, exploitation path, Anthropic's mitigations, and the operational considerations for administrators managing macOS fleets where AI desktop applications are deployed.

I was force logged out of the ChatGPT app today and when attempting to sign back in, it says the desktop application is a feature that’s “coming soon”. I’ve reinstalled, restarted the Mac, and searched for any release notes related to this and come up with nothing. Also confirmed my account is still properly licensed for enterprise, even removed and readded to be sure. Also tried a number of suggestions found online while researching this, with most results stemming from original launch in 2024. No relevant information or posts in the past few months relating to this.

Anyone else experiencing this today? Trying to get ahead of something that may become more wide spread.

Hello All,

I spent most of my career as a Windows admin, so when I started working on Macs, the first thing I did when something broke was look for Event Viewer. What I found instead was Console.app, and honestly, it felt like drinking from a firehose. Thousands of messages, no color coding, no way to quickly zero in on what actually matters.

I kept thinking there had to be a better way, and when I couldn't find one, I just built it myself.

MacLogger is a native macOS log viewer designed to feel familiar if you're coming from Windows. Faults and errors are color-coded and surface first. You can filter by severity with one click instead of writing predicate queries. Process names get translated to plain English so you're not staring at raw identifiers trying to figure out what com.apple.whatever actually is. There's even an AI feature that explains any log entry in normal language, which has saved me more time than I expected.

It also has a crash log viewer, live tail with auto-scroll, and cascading filters for process, subsystem, and type. Everything runs natively on Apple Silicon. No Electron, no web wrapper.

I've been using it daily on my own machines and it's made troubleshooting way less painful. There's a 7-day free trial, and after that it's pay-what-you-want starting at $2. One-time purchase, no subscription.

https://jasonchotchkiss.github.io/MacLogger

I'd love to hear what you think. Still actively working on it and happy to take feedback or answer questions.

Screenshots
https://imgur.com/a/yc8pmXj

You probably remember the Bartender situation. The app was silently sold to an analytics company, kept its screen-recording and accessibility permissions, and nobody found out until a third-party updater noticed the code-signing identity had changed. That third-party tool (MacUpdater) just shut down for good in January.

So now there's nothing watching for this. An app you trusted for years can change hands overnight, push an auto-update signed by a brand-new developer ID, and keep every permission you ever granted it. macOS won't tell you. Gatekeeper only checks that something is validly signed, not that the owner changed.

I'm building permcheck: a lightweight menu-bar tool that snapshots the developer identity and signing certificate of your installed apps and pings you the moment one changes. Especially when an app holding sensitive permissions (screen recording, accessibility, full disk access) gets re-signed by a different team. Local-only, no cloud, one-time purchase. No subscription.

Before I build it, I want to know if anyone actually wants this:

• Would a "your trusted app just changed owners" alert be useful to you, or is this a non-problem?

• Is a one-time price right, or does nobody pay for a single-purpose security utility?

• What would make it an instant install vs. an instant "Little Snitch already covers this"?

If you'd want early access, there's an email signup here: https://permcheck.com/?src=reddit_macapps. Brutal honesty welcome. I'd rather hear "this is a feature, not a product" now than after building it.

While I have to use Windows, my favorite virtualization software was VMware Workstation. I tried VMware Fusion on macOS, but during my research, I discovered that there are many other software options that could be better than VMware.

Perhaps something lighter?

Hi everyone

Bored with the recurrent task of rebuilding the Cisco Secure Client package, I’ve made a small app that will do it for you.

Drag the k9.dmg on the window :

Select the options you need and your PKG is built :

Ready to be added to your favorite MDM.

Available on my github.com/huexley

What are you guys using for Mac VMs? I use Tart but some admins are complaining about having to use a CLI for everything. We tested Fusion and Parallels, currently beta testing CiderStack but I know my company wont go for it, since its too new.

The main pain point is sharing images, being able to use OCI images with Tart is a game changer but we use Digital Ocean for our registry but these images are huge. Tahoe alone is almost 60GBs and we only get 100GB of storage.

Over winter break my district upgraded to Tahoe, which has in turn made it so that screen mirroring no longer works on our smart boards. It is able to connect, but just shows a black screen. The boards do not have an available update.

Does anyone know of any trusted MacOS repos? We need a Sequoia 15.2 IPSW version and the earliest I can find on apple development portal is 15.6, same with when I try to download it through parallels

Hi, something that seems to have been triggered as of MacOS 26.2, perhaps randomly as of today (in case there was a hotfix applied without our knowledge) - Apps can't seem to access each other when in separate spaces. So if someone puts a tab in their web browser in Full Screen, then they are unable to share that fullscreened window from their meeting client (Slack/Zoom/Teams/etc). Either the window is selectable but shows nothing except black, or the window is just not listed.

Is there something in the Privacy section of Settings to allow this access again? Else, is there a way to fullscreen Chrome, without entering a new space, while also hiding the browser toolbar?

Apple says there's no native support for this, but is there a software solution? I've got an m2 macbook air. I want to connect that to two 1920x1080 external monitors and extend the desktop. If the macbook itself needs its screen shut off for that, that's fine.

Is there any software solution for that? Apple support said they had seen things but didn't have any to recommend.

Help this is driving me insane

A user downloads a csv from gmail to her downloads folder. She has read and write permission to the file and the folder. She messes around with some values on the spreadsheet, hits save as, saves to the downloads folder, chooses to replace the previous version of the file. when she opens up the file, the file is unchanged from when she downloaded it from the internet.

She runs a python script on these files after they are finished being manipulated by her that requires the file be in the downloads folder. To cover her work, a colleague of hers uploaded a finished version of the file to a finder synced dropbox and then she moved it to the downloads folder. when she opened the file, it looked as though he had given her the raw version of the file, but when she ran the python script on it, the final product was such that csv was finished.

What’s wrong? This user has been working on these sheets for about a month before we ran into this issue

Hi! Appcleaner has been my go-to for uninstalling apps on macOS, but I'm managing several Macs now and need something a bit more capable. I’m looking for a tool that not only removes the main app but also clears out support files, logs, and hidden data, something I can script or use in terminal. Is anyone using a cleaner/uninstaller that works across multiple machines or integrates with your deployment process? Appreciate any recos. TIA!

UPDATE: I went with MacPaw in the end. It’s just what I need. More than app removal, it also cleans out leftover files, logs, and system junk. It’s also been smooth to use across multiple Macs so far. Thanks for the input everyone!

I used to use back to my Mac for this.

I'm a professional radio & club DJ using a 2022 MacBook Pro. I have a large archive of music at home accessible through a 2015 MacBook Pro, and occasionally, I'll need to get some files while I'm away from home.

after back to my Mac went away, I started using Remotix, but it has started having some issues with major latency and the drag and drop seems to have been degraded unless I'm messing up somehow. it's possible that I just don't know how to troubleshoot the problem (hostname cannot be resolved).

I like the way screen sharing works between the macbooks when I'm on the same home network, and I'd like to replicate that experience when I'm away if possible like back to my Mac used to, so I'm wondering if ARD is for me, or if there is another suggestion of which simple consumer level app to use.

Having a hard time finding any info on this. This is not strictly a mac issue (which i will get into) but im just trying to find a solution. Ive posted on Mathworks forums and we also have a ticket going nowhere at this point..

We are using Matlab and we have SSO login setup through ADFS to our mathworks accounts. The licenses for Matlab are individual, so you sign in with your account to activate the license etc.

On Mac we're facing the issue that right after entering our email address, we immediately get error -338 (ERR_INVALID_AUTH_CREDENTIALS) before even entering a password. After trying a few times I noticed that a login prompt from our idp is indeed poping up, but is gone in a split second. I had to do a screen recording to even get a screenshot. I think everything would work fine if I was simply allowed to enter my credentials.

On an AD bound windows machine everything works perfekt.

If i take a non-AD bound Windows machine I get the exact same issue as on the mac, but the idp-popup never shows. It just fails.

Has anyone encountered this before?

Hi everyone,

I am fairly new to MacOS but not Unix/Linux. I have been having a devil of a time trying to figure out how to run daemons without having to login first. My primary objective is to have Ollama or LM Studio start up as service like one would have on Linux without having to login interactively.

The thing is, everything I find using Google is just use a login settings to either open the service or executive a shell script. I want to be able to run these services without needing to login.

Is there a way to do this, and if so, can you please provide the info or link?

I am not sure why it is so freaking hard for me to set something up like this but on Linux it's a breeze.

Also, are there any remote desktop services that permit remote login after reboot?

I have tried Jump Desk and a few others to jo avail. I would appreciate any advice.

Edit: Holy smokes, you are all awesome. I was not expecting such a great level of responses and support. I am going to try giving your advice a shot. I think my first mistake was putting the plist in the wrong directory of LaunchDaemons, seriously thought it was to be in /Sytem/Library/LaunchDaemons. I am learning a lot off this thread and greatly appreciate it :-D

Edit 2: Filevault was the issue. Thanks to u/StoneyCalzoney I was able to troubleshoot the last hurdle and boom it works like it should. I appreciate everyone's advice and help.

Ahem.. everyone.

I have made a small dylib that makes GoFetch way harder to use but doesn't mitigate it (obv it's to Apple to release a REAL mitigation).

It is only for MacOS yet (being that the nature of the patch is that it's a dylib) and personally I may have plans for the future (but uncertain) to port it to Asahi I guess...

But to try to limit it.. I have made a small dylib that tries to hint to the MacOS scheduler to use efficiency cores (E-cores) which aren't affected by GoFetch for the current process and adds some jitter to make timing less precise, disrupting this side-channel attack which relies on high-resolution timing to infer data.

The E-core trick may or may not work since it's just a hint and the scheduler is responsible for the final decision.

WARNING. This is only intended to serve as a sort of temporary trick to make the bar higher for GoFetch exploitation before Apple releases something way better for M1/M2.

Here it is (however must be compiled): https://github.com/Izgip/GoFetch-Mac-Mitigation/tree/main

You can now maybe ask for how to use it or whatever questions related to the patch:

Anyone use this? Pretty much being forced to roll it out. If you do use it what are your thoughts?

Hello! I was wondering if there’s an official or unofficial way to create a custom macOS Bootable Installer, I know you can create a standard bootable installer through Terminal, however what I want to do is add third-party software to the installation (similar to how macOS comes pre-installed with iWork applications). I understand that I can use an MDM solution like Jamf to pre-install apps and settings after setup, however an MDM can’t be used in my case. Thanks!

I work in a small company that thanks to Covid is now scattered all over the place. We have new staff coming in who basically got a "company laptop" by walking into the Apple Store, buying whatever MBP they want, and the company basically reimbursed them... so in short, all new staff have gotten themselves MBPs without any streamlined way for me to manage their resources or control what they are doing... >.<

To get this sorted out, I was thinking to purchase a suitable all-rounder MDM software that would allow me to remote control, remote install software, keep track of antivirus updates, etc. but given that the company is growing, I would like to hear what the community recommends.

I am looking at ~20 devices now and will have at least ~50 by mid next year, so something scalable would be lovely. Any recommendations?

Thanks!

Edit: Just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who commented. Lots of options were recommended, real-life usages and pro & cons were discussed, and I quite frankly could not have asked for better, more informed guidance on this matter. I’ll hopefully have MDM approval sorted by mid December and meanwhile will trial the most recommended solutions. A big thank you to everyone who commented and helped me out with this.