Apps from Mac App Store crash when started (CODESIGNING error)

I was introduced a solution that works with some apps.

Open terminal and type:

sudo codesign —deep -fs - /Applications/Pages.app

After typing -fs - you can drag your desired application. I tried it with pages. While it now opens and gives me the option to either create a new document or open an existing one, it closes again after I chose one of said options. But with some other apps it actually worked.

Update:

I found a workaround for Pages, Keynote and Numbers. It’s a little bit annoying and probably not worth the work, yet I just wanted to mention it.

If you have El Capitan on another drive or mac you can copy pages from it and paste it in your High Sierra application folder. Then run said terminal command and it will open - which surprises me a little bit. Now you can use pages, yet it’s the “El Capitan version”, so not the latest version for High Sierra.

Other ‘apple appsm I managed to get working now (with said terminal command) that didn’t before are iMovie and Garage Band.

Just want to remind everyone who’s experiencing this to please file a bug report:

https://feedbackassistant.apple.com

Given the severity of this bug, I'm hoping Apple will fix it even though it only affects an older OS. I would think breaking the entire App Store should be big enough to warrant a fix.

I have the same issue as well as many other people. The issue has been reported in eight different discussion threads that I know of.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252030900

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252037712

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252032870

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252060316

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252056821

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252061206

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252030032

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252059424

Observed behaviour is:

Almost all apps downloaded from the Apple App Store crash with a 'Code Sign Invalid' error (CODESIGNING).

It's not conclusive, but the issue seems to...

...have started around Wednesday last week (2020.11.11);

...affect macOS High Sierra (all versions, unpatched and patches);

...affect systems that have had the operating system recently reinstalled.

I was talking with Apple Support about 45 minutes and no fix it, the only one solution now was report to Apple. Please we need to write to https://apple.com/feedback with our problem to take in consideration to fix it. Thanks.

Hey Peter,

I've got no answers for you, just empathy. I've got the exact same setup: mid 2010 MacBook Pro with freshly installed High Sierra. None of my purchased apps from the Mac App Store work.

Have you found a solution for yourself yet?

Same Codesigning error & resulting crash reports. After reading multiple recent discussions on the Apple Support site I chose to go back to OS X 10.12.6(restore) dumping OS X 10.13 High Sierra(recently installed Nov.15.2020). I did a restore with Time Machine after rebooting in recovery mode. The process was simpler as my computer does not have a SSD. No APFS files to deal with. All my App Store apps are back. Thank you everyone for contributing.

Hi Peter, I posted you request to a few of the other related discussions as...

I'm posting a request from PeterPeterPeterPeter (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252030900?answerId=253955318022&page=2) for us to report this issue on the two Apple Feedback resources below...

Please help by reporting to Apple here https://apple.com/feedback

and here https://feedbackassistant.apple.com !

Hi, I tried this after copying my Sierra version of Pages in High Sierra.

Terminal answered me this :

/Applications/Pages.app: replacing existing signature

xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools), missing xcrun at: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/xcrun

/Applications/Pages.app: the codesign_allocate helper tool cannot be found or used

In subcomponent: /Applications/Pages.app/Contents/Frameworks/PagesConverter.framework

Any idea why it doesn't work ?

Same worked for me - 3 days of trial & error restoring and install 10.13.6. even clean install results in codesigning error while the codesigning itself seams to be ok for all affected AppStore Apps.

back now to 10.12.6 and waiting for a bug fix from Apple - feels like a kill switch from Apple for legacy systems, terrible idea

There's another thread where they're narrowing down the problem. It appears to be a trustd cache and an improperly revoked certificate. I recommend reading from at least page 8 forward. No permanent solution yet, but there are workarounds that will temporarily let you launch applications.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252037712?answerId=253977725022#253977725022

I used a temporary solution ↓

Launch the Terminal application and insert a command:

sudo sqlite3 /Library/Keychains/crls/valid.sqlite3 'delete from serials where hex(serial) = "04CA81F77D5E33F7"'

After that Microsoft Remote Desktop application installed via AppStore was launched

Try to open XCode, it should ask you to install additional command line tools. Install those (could take a while) and try again

tried your solution but it keeps getting a rejected message in Terminal and so there is no option for signer info.