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Comment by isykt | Hacker News Reader

>Keyboard Maestro 11 is not available from the Mac App Store and probably never will be.

I appreciate the honesty here.

Aside from any business/ philosophical reasons they might have, one concrete reason for this is that the App Store prohibits apps from asking for accessibility permissions, needed for recording keystrokes, which I imagine would basically make this app impossible!

You can certainly try submitting an app that requests it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have Moom installed from the App Store, it requires the Accessibility feature to be flipped on in Privacy and Security -> Accessibility before it'll work.

Interesting, maybe they've changed this since I last looked at it. At some point I was pretty sure that Accessibility required unsandboxing, but App Store required sandbox enabled.

Kinda make sense considering the functionality. IIRC Apple require all apps on the Mac App Store to enable App Sandbox.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/app_sandb...

I don't blame them. I don't put my Mac software in their app store either. Because:

-High commission.

-Strong downward pressure on price (how much stuff in the Mac app store is $30+ ?).

-Can't sell upgrades.

-I don't want Apple getting between the customer and me.

-I just can't face jumping through all their arbitary hoops.

Don't you still need a developer account to sign and notarize? I just released an app outside the store and that's what I do, at least.

Yes, I still need an Apple developer account to sign and notarize my software. I'm ok with that.

So technically Apple is still between, just way way less hoops.

Not really. The customer buys from me, not Apple and I get their email address and can ask them to sign up for my newsletter. I have to sign my and notarize my software with Apple, but the customer probably isn't even aware of that,

I meant it in a way where you still need Apples "permission" to distribute the app, through the developer license and notarization. Without it you/we couldn't sign the app causing trouble for the end user, or am I wrong here?

You can distribute your Mac app without signing, but customers have to set their preferences to accept unsigned apps, which is not the default. So not advisable.

So you sort of need Apple's permission. But, as long as you are prepared to stump up the ~$100 per year and don't do anything stupid, then the certificate and notarization shouldn't be an issue. I haven't heard of any bona fide developers being refused a certificate. And I haven't had any issue with notarization (yet).

BTW I have heard of bona fide developers being kicked out of the Mac and iOS app stores for all sorts of dodgy reasons.

Most likely for the same reason that 1Password's App Store version can't read QR codes from the screen - limited permissions.

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