Apple’s tweaked a security feature in macOS Sequoia - and not everyone’s going to be happy about this

As we edge closer to the official release of macOS 15, an interesting new security-related change has been spotted in Sequoia – although it’s one that might annoy some people.

With this move, Apple has made it slightly harder for users to sidestep its built-in Gatekeeper security function when they’re installing an application in macOS.

For those not familiar with Gatekeeper, it’s designed to keep your Mac safe from apps that could contain malware. Essentially, Gatekeeper steers you towards downloading fully vetted apps from the App Store rather than being tempted by apps you can grab from anywhere on the web (which may present a greater security risk).

Currently, to avoid Gatekeeper’s interference when installing an app that you downloaded outside of the official store, you can Control-click to install the software.

With this change, that shortcut to bypass Gatekeeper no longer works. As Apple explains in a freshly published support document, the new way of working with Gatekeeper in macOS Sequoia involves going to System Settings > Privacy & Security, where you’ll have to “review security information for software before allowing it to run.”

While we can appreciate that this is a security-tightening measure and an attempt to keep macOS devices more secure, making a shortcut into a slightly longer cut isn’t exactly ideal. It will likely only annoy some macOS users, especially those who know what they’re doing and are confident that the app they’re installing is on the level.

New public beta has arrived

By the way, this change isn’t related to the new macOS Sequoia beta that’s just been released; rather, it was spotted by an enterprising tester in a previous beta (and others have picked up on it, too, as MacRumors noticed).

Sadly, this third public beta of Sequoia doesn’t really make anything in the way of big changes. No doubt there are a fair few fixes and tweaks going on under the hood, but the only minor addition we’ve actually spotted thus far is a new wallpaper (one that was spotted hidden in macOS 15 already).

That is a little disappointing, but as we get closer and closer to the official release of macOS Sequoia, we probably won’t see any other major additions to the beta, especially now that iPhone Mirroring has already dropped (it arrived in the second public beta). Apple Intelligence isn’t expected to debut on macOS until much later this year (there’s currently a macOS 15.1 beta that developers are testing the AI feature in, but there’s no news if this will hit a public beta, too).