Gifox.app may be damaged or incomplete

[lottamus]

I am unable to open Gifox after restarting my computer. Deleting the app and doing a fresh install fixes the issue until my computer restarts again.

• Gifox v2.02
• macOS v10.14.6

[iby]

Very interesting! Could you send a copy of the app when it's reported damaged again? Will look into this.

[iby]

@lottamus did you sort this out?

[lottamus]

@ianbytchek I upgraded to macOS Catalina v10.15.2 and haven't seen the issue since. I'm guessing it was specific to Mojavee.

Closing for now since it's no longer an issue unless someone else brings it up

[lottamus]

Re-opening as this issue has started happening again. Just shot you an email and included a zip of my Gifox app. Let me know if there's anything else I can do!

[iby]

One thing that stands out right away are messed up frameworks, all symlinks are flattened and replaced with the actual copies of linked files. In theory that shouldn't be an issue, but there are also some missing info files, which probably is the cause:

Trying to launch the app in shell confirms the issue with damaged frameworks:

In theory, symlink flattening might happen during file operations, like copying between network drives (I'm guessing) or archiving, but the default archive utility doesn't do it. Why info files are missing is a mystery. If you've used a different archive utility from default, then it might also be the reason and you might want to try specifying to keep symlinks explicitly.

Otherwise, I'd be curious to find out what might be causing this? Can you think of anything?

[iby]

There seem to be a pattern for all these reports coming in shortly after new releases, which makes me think this might be related to automatic updates. Gifox doesn't do silent auto-updates, but there are apps that can update other apps, like CleanMyMac X. Is there any chance you're using this or a similar app to update Gifox?

Can you verify if this happens when updating using the built-in updater (inside the library menu, bottom right button) and with a 3rd party app, if you're using any? You can get the previous version 2.1.1 of Gifox from here. Perhaps just get the previous version, there aren't any critical differences, and observe it for a day or two?

P.S. Is your Gifox copy sits inside /Applications folder or some other location?

[iby]

I said that Gifox doesn't do auto-updates, which isn't true – we do have an option for that. Please check if it's enabled and let me know? You can verify by getting the previous version and checking for updates, there will be a checkbox at the bottom:

[jklmli]

This started happening to me with the latest release - I've disabled automatic updates and manually click 'Install Update' in the prompt above.

My standard fix for this is to run brew cask reinstall gifox.

[iby]

Thanks for the report. We've seen a few cases after this issue was posted and now have a little better idea about what's going on. Apparently there are two possible cases: the app gets damaged for real and the app gets blocked by the system. In first case you are likely to see a message with Finder icon (screenshots 1 & 2), in latter case you'll see a message with Gatekeeper icon (screenshot 3).

As it turns out, the case with the app getting blocked by system is by far more common and usually can be cured with a simple xattr -cr /Applications/Gifox.app terminal command, see here for instructions. Alternatively, you can reinstall the app, but the issue is likely to return. The case with the app being physically damaged can be fixed by reinstalling the app.

In both cases the issue would be caused by local macOS environment and there can be a million reasons why it happens. I've seen references that Gatekeeper problems might be related to LaunchServices, so rebuilding LaunchServices Database might help in the long run. If you have any other info or suggestions, I'd really appreciate if you share!

[jklmli]

Seems to have stopped happening, haven't seen any issues in the past week.

[lottamus]

This issue happened again for me today after restarting my computer 😱

I have the "launch automatically at system startup" setting enabled:

Every time I would restart/shutdown my computer, the Gifox app would fail to open and shows the error:

Gifox.app may be damaged or incomplete

I tried opening the app via command line by running the following:

cd /Applications && open Gifox.app

And received:

The application cannot be opened because its executable is missing

After a quick Google search, I narrowed this down to an issue with the Launch Services database. (stackoverflow)

After force updating the Gifox app entry, I'm no longer seeing the issue though I need to run this every time I restart/shutdown my computer:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -f Gifox.app

@ianbytchek any ideas if this an issue with my LaunchServices database specifically?

[billiegoose]

Thanks @lottamus. This happened to me today after restarting my computer. Exact same symptoms, exact same "fix".

[iby]

@lottamus I somehow missed your excellent response. Thanks a bunch for putting this together and providing the solution!

Problems with LaunchServices are rather common, unfortunately if you come across them they are the pain in the 🍑 to solve. Many "maintenance" apps come with support for rebuilding the LaunchServices database, including CleanMyMac from MacPaw. That's what they say about it:

The Finder uses the Launch Services database to keep information about file types and applications assigned to open them by default.

As you install, remove, or update applications, the database may become corrupted and cause some troubles with opening applications or with displaying correct contents of the Open With menu (control-click any file and choose the Open With command). Use the Rebuild Launch Service Database task to resolve these issues.

Run the task if either of these symptoms appears:

• When you double-click a file, it opens in a wrong application
• Some files and folders have incorrect file type icons
• The Open With menu displays duplicated or outdated application references

We had a very bad edge case with LaunchService awhile ago and eventually solved it here. This might be happening with Gifox more often than other apps because it uses launch on startup feature which is controlled by LaunchServices, but that's only my guess. There was a rise of reported cases with Catalina release, but @wmhilton's report is the first one in a long-long time now…