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When I was running Mountain Lion I selected "Allow apps downloaded from: Anywhere" in Security & Privacy. I updated to Yosemite a few days ago. The update set that back to: "Mac App Store and identified developers". I want to run some software from elsewhere. When I select Security & Privacy and click the padlock icon, a pane comes up asking me to enter my password. Since I don't have a password I simply click "Unlock". The padlock unlocks for a few milliseconds and re-locks far too quickly for me to change the setting. I know that I don't need a password as that pane lets me click Authenticate during software installation from a .dmg

So what do I have to do to change Allow apps setting now?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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You have a few options:

  • Temporarily set a password to change the setting.

or

  • Hold down Ctrl, click on the app, then click Open from the menu shown. This will allow you to temporarily bypass the checks.
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  • Thanks Stan, but that looks like a workaround for a "feature". Hopefully something will eventually be done to correct this. Cheers Chris
    – CptDangerous
    Oct 25, 2014 at 10:34
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You will need to temporarily put a password on, then you can just take it off. I had to do that for Steam and it worked perfectly. I think this might be a bug and hopefully they're gonna fix it.

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    I am having the same issue. I tried the temp password and it did the trick. Truly it was annoying and I would be shocked if Apple doesn't fix this soon.
    – user112484
    Feb 4, 2015 at 19:20
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    I was running into the exact same problem today. I'd try to open an app, and it'd pop up the not trusted dialog. Opening the Security & Privacy settings then clicking "Open Anyway" did nothing. If I changed the setting to "Anywhere" it just reverted back to the original setting. I was unable to fix this using the GUI... I was able to fix it using a command line tool. Close your System Preferences, and open Terminal.app. To see the status of Gatekeeper, run spctl --status. To disable Gatekeeper, run sudo spctl --master-disable. To enable Gatekeeper, run sudo spctl --master-enable.
    – livingstaccato
    Feb 7, 2015 at 7:51

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