How to add signing certificate

[christopher27711812gkf1]

I have plugins that I use on a few macs and share with some friends over the years. 

None of them work with the latest AE and Mac OS. And we cannot even open After Effects when these plugins are in the MediaCore plugin folder. 

I believe I need to add some sort of signing certificate when compiling them with Xcode. 

Is there any documentation on how to do this for the AE SDK? 

Thank you

[jamesastro]

It sounds like you might need to notarize your plugins. Here is some documentation from Apple that discusses how to do it. I hope this helps.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_macos_software_before_distribution

[christopher27711812gkf1]

This is helpful.

The documentation leads me to an Apple Developer site where I need to pay
$99/year in order to sign and register my plugins. Is that correct? I need
to pay $99/year to compile software for my own computers?

I must be missing something.

Please advise

[jamesastro]

Xcode allows you to build and run software on your development machine without a developer account. However, you'll need the $99 developer account in order to distribute the software. This is part of Apple's "System Integrity Protection." It won't allow software to run unless it's from a known developer, and the software has been notarized to ensure that it doesn't contain malware, or break security rules.

You can disable System Integrity Protection, but I'm not sure how to do that. Doing so will also make your Macs less secure.

[shachar carmi]

indeed. a bit of a hassle, but if you're going commercial then this cost is negligible. 

[christopher27711812gkf1]

Thanks for your help on this.

I found an old Adobe Photoshop post with a more direct solution :
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-and-macos-catalina.html

The solution is to use sudo xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine
myPlugin.plugin

I am the developer and only installing it on my own computers

[jamesastro]

Oh that's awesome! I'll definitely use that with some of my own plugins. Thanks for hunting that down.