Publish your macOS App outside the App Store

When I first started building . It turned out to be the simplest way to sell and distribute my app directly. Here’s how I did it:

Step 1: Build and Export the App from Xcode

Once your app is ready for release, do the following:

Step 2: Create a DMG Installer

To give users a better experience in order to install the app, I used

Once it's done you will have your DMG installer ready, but you need to do an extra step, which is notarize this DMG too to avoid getting an error like this:

generated from your Apple ID account. Regular Apple ID passwords will not work for notarization. If you haven't created one before, follow Apple's instructions to generate an app-specific password for use with notarytool.

After creating the profile you need to notarize the DMG file with your newly created profile:

xcrun notarytool submit YourApp.dmg --keychain-profile "your-app-profile" --wait

Now you need to staple the DMG:

xcrun stapler staple YourApp.dmg

And finally you are almost ready, just to check that this process has worked, you can check it in your terminal using:

spctl --assess --type open --context context:primary-signature -v YourApp.dmg



# Expected output:

# YourApp.dmg: accepted

# source=Notarized Developer ID

If you see something like this message, you’re done. You can upload your DMG to Gumroad (or wherever you prefer) and start selling.