I have been using version 4 for a month or so. Whenever I drag an Outlook email into Devonthink I get a warning message that says, “…is an app created by the app Outlook. Are you sure you want to open it.” I never got this type of warning message when I used version 3. It seems like it is an apple security setting but I have no idea where to go to turn it off. Can anyone help me out with how to disable it?
A screenshot of the alert would be great.
If you’re referring to this, it’s clearly not being issued by DEVONthink…
And I can reproduce this when dragging and dropping to the Dock icon on macOS Sequoia but not into a database or the Sorter. However… it also happens when dragging and dropping on other application Dock icons, e.g., BBEdit, even if dragged to the desktop first.
It appears to be Apple quarantining emails from Outlook…
xattr -l /Users/herax/Desktop/Security\ alert.eml
com.apple.lastuseddate#PS: tI\h
com.apple.macl: @?m rj?L??G"?Ia
com.apple.provenance:
com.apple.quarantine: 00c3;685c490f;Outlook;
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine
Removing the quarantine allows it to be opened or imported with no complaints. But again, it also appears to be Dock-specific.
Whenever I drag an Outlook email into Devonthink
Are you saying you’re seeing a different behavior?
Yes, this is exactly what I am talking about, when I drag it to the icon in the dock. However, it only gives me the warning when I drag the outlook messages into Devonthink, it does not do this when I drag into other applications in the dock. This never happened to me when I used version 3 of Devonthink. But it is possible that an update to Sequoia could be the culprit. I am running 15.5.
Do you have BBEdit to try?
The Dock is completely controlled by the system. DEVONthink just receives the file.
That looks related to what Jeff Johnson describes here: Gatekeeper change in macOS 15.4. Quoting from the conclusion:
More and more, I’m thinking that the new behavior is a bug. I suspect that the Gatekeeper change was probably inspired by some kind of security issue, so to an extent the new behavior may have been intended as a “feature”, but the implementation of the security fix was botched by Apple.
[…] it can happen with almost any file, depending entirely on its file extension and the
CFBundleDocumentTypes
declared by the app.It should go without saying, but to clear, the Gatekeeper alerts occur when trying to open a file only when the file is quarantined, i.e., when the file has a
com.apple.quarantine
extended attribute. If you remove the file system extended attribute, then Gatekeeper won’t complain at all, regardless of theCFBundleDocumentTypes
and file extension.[…]
Thus, if I can describe the bug here, it’s that Launch Services mistakenly categorizes files as a “dangerous” type when that type is declared in the
CFBundleDocumentTypes
and when more specific, fitting types are not also declared in theCFBundleDocumentTypes
of the app.
Thank you for posting the link to the article. This is exactly what is happening when I try and drag an email from Outlook to the Devonthink Icon in the dock. I suspect it has something to do with the latest version of MacOS 15.4 or 15.5. For now I am just dragging it directly to the inbox to avoid the annoying warning I get every time.