What's special about /Applications on macOS Catalina? I'm building a macOS binary to accompany a Chrome extension using the Chrome Native Messaging API. When the binary (unsigned, unnotarized) is in my Downloads folder, Chrome is not able to launch it. However, when I move the binary to /Applications (per https://stackoverflow.com/a/59710823/12581350), Chrome is able to launch it.
I was curious if anyone knows the reason why it's able to run from /Applications but not ~/Downloads?
I believe this is related to App Translocation.
Yes, it’s related to the quarantine attribute. I believe it is the act of manually moving the file (not just moving it to /Applications/) which tells macOS that it is safe to open.