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Having built crossplatform native app supporting MacOS app, I have never gotten notarization to work as I'm not using xcode a lot.

I'm curious, how much does it cost? Is it per build or a subscription? How do you make it work financially for an open-source project?

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You just need an Apple Developer account ($99/year), which you likely already have if you're distributing apps. Notarization itself has no per-build cost — you can notarize as many builds as you want. The process is essentially: codesign your app, zip it up, submit it to Apple's notary service via xcrun notarytool, and staple the ticket. It can be automated in CI too — this project uses a GitHub Actions workflow for it. The $99/year is really the only cost, and that's for the developer account itself, not notarization specifically.

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