How do I stop Mac OS Monterey from verifying every time I open a Microsoft or Adobe app?

Dear Apple, I am URGING you to fix these ridiculous bugs! You have entirely ruined regular work flow for me and probably millions of others. It took me at least twenty minutes to "verify" Microsoft Word. And Adobe products, which I use daily to run my business, have the same issue. Yes, I understand the theory of protecting from third party software issue, but Microsoft and Adobe, c'mon!!! You obviously must realize that these softwares are updated constantly, much like yours are. As well, are the number one used softwares. I am beyond frustrated with this issue, and I GUARANTEE there are thousands if not millions with the same frustration. I am a diehard Apple user since the very beginning, but you are making it easier than ever to want to jump ship. I suggest you seriously consider figuring this out, and very soon!!

Sorry but that is NOT helpful. Gatekeeper is verifying all my Adobe and Microsoft apps every time there is an update. So that means that I would have to uninstall 20 big apps and reinstall them every time there is an update. Apple needs to fix Gatekeeper so verification happens in the background when the computer is not active. There should be a "Check Later" box on the verification popup to delay verification until the next inactive period.

I get it, and appreciate the need for security. However, you are missing the entire point. MAC users do not want headaches like this, that directly affect work flow, equalling direct loss of revenue. You will lose customers, you are losing customers because of it. I am losing customers because of it!

What you are basically telling us is the same thing as me saying, if you're going to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you have to wait ten minutes before opening the jar of peanut butter, then 20 more minutes to open the jelly. Once you do that, put the slices of bread back in the bag and go to the store and buy a new bag of bread because the first one that was perfectly fresh and a well known brand, isn't baked by Apple. Now that you've done that, you have to spread each piece with a different knife making sure one is plastic and one is steel.

Again, I appreciate your effort to give us all solutions, but as a business practice, this is a fail. We just want the darn sandwich! (which by the way, we all paid handsomely for)

I am waiting 90minutes for this verification (my third attempt today - 3 hours since I sat down to try to start my work day).

X Code has taken over 30 minutes this morning - Apple's own product. I have uninstalled xcode, restarted and it is still verifying!!!

This is beyond frustrating and it happens EVERY SINGLE DAY! Unless Mac is updating Monteray every day - I don't see how the apple statements about these verifications being required when an update is installed can be true.

I need to be able to login to my mac to be able to work. Do I disable updates so that I can avoid this script?!

this would be bearable if it were not so slow. this verification takes several, 3-5 minutes on my 2019 iMac pro.

What you're experiencing is unusual. The only time I geta verifying notification is when I update or upgrade the system and then it's only once.

Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

Give this a try: boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 3 - 5 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

Turn off automatic updates for your Microsoft and Adobe products.

Once a month, when you have time, update them and open the updated apps. For the rest of the month they will open without verification.

You could also ask Microsoft and Adobe to stop invalidating their apps when they update them. I have many apps that update quite often, but I have never seen a new validation dialog for them.

Greetings creativepassion,

We see you have questions on app verification and are happy to help.

This process will occur any time you open an app that you obtained from outside the Mac App Store, as described at our site Safely open apps on your Mac. Opening apps installed from the Mac App Store would not show verification messages.

We hope this helps!

Hello ... It seems many of us have this problem but Apple has no solution.

WISH LIST: Apple to create a "white list" of apps that Mac OS will skip the verifying process.

Apple employees will not see your "wish" here. If you are serious about putting this before an Apple employee, you need this:

Feedback - macOS - Apple

...not these user-to-user forums.

I also had this problem, and finally stumbled onto the solution (for me at least). The issue seems to be the old Fusion Drive in my 2017 iMac, and very slow access to the spinning disk section of the drive. It was not difficult to get a new SSD external drive, install MacOS there and use it as my startup disk. Access is about 20 times faster with a new USB 3.2 connected drive, and would have been even faster if if I had splurged for a Thunderbolt drive. Verifying Word, Photoshop, and other apps now takes about ten seconds.

I followed these instructions:

How to Setup and Use an External SSD as y… - Apple Community

Hope this helps!

If your Adobe and Microsoft applications came thru the App Store, you might uninstall and then re-download from the app store and see if the verification routine ends. If not consider the following:

I suspect the "Security Policy" for your Macintosh HD may need changing. Monterey setting as installed on my Mac Studio was at "Full Security". To use a certain software program, before I loaded any Microsoft or Adobe programs, I had to change to the "Reduced Security" setting. Reduced security setting allows more flexibility for the user (only) to make changes to the OS like manual delete of old software, add images for screen saving. It eliminated for me the verification for a HP printer driver. Since then I've added more software including adobe and Microsoft with no verifications after the initial load.

The following file tells how. Go and see what your current setting is, you do not have to change, but if you use the setting recommended, that should eliminate the verification. You can always change back to Full, but you may get prompts at launch, but try that too and see if they are eliminated. Let the community know how this works out please.

There is no "Enable System Extensions" choice in the Security and Privacy in System preference.

The process bar tells you which app the OS is verifying. Such as this one after Word has had an update applied.

After an update, it's normal for a fair number of app to see this once after the update has been applied. Like any of the Adobe Suite, Microsoft Office (any flavor), XCode, Quark XPress and others.

But if it does this every single time you launch an app, then it needs to be uninstalled and then reinstalled.

The answer you received is incorrect. The verification is only supposed to happen once. Not every single time you open a third party app.

The solution is to uninstall the app causing the repeated verification step and reinstalling it. It will then verify on the first launch as a "new" app, but then shouldn't afterwards.

Some apps will require a re-verification. Such as every time you apply an update to Office or the Adobe apps. But it should still only do that once after the update has been applied.

Microsoft and Adobe update their apps at least once a month. So, you would expect to see this fairly frequently for Office and Adobe apps.

Could it be that you are seeing this app verification not every time you launch one of the apps but once for each app about once a month?

The only issue I am experiencing with this behaviour of late is that the app verification process seems to be taking anywhere up to 60 seconds. A marked slow down on previous months/years, since Apple first introduced this.