App is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash

Targets macOS
16

This error happens with Mac App Store apps (when testing before submission), I’ve found two reasons.

  1. The receipt validation code within the application doesn’t work correctly.
  2. The receipt validation at Apple’s end doesn’t work correctly.

Last year, we experienced number for a number of months. The only solution was to stop using Apple’s guidelines for the Mac and start following the iOS guidelines. This creates a new problem as iOS receipt validation is asynchronous, so your validation flow must be altered to adopt it.

I have made the code for testing App Store receipts (via iOS guidelines) available for FREE from the following page OWStoreKitBridge - Integrating the Mac App Store with Xojo