Droplets in macOS 15 Sequoia or later: fixing the “damaged” and “file was not found” errors

Droplets are small drag-and-drop applications created by a program on your own Mac — A Better Finder Attributes makes them, and so do A Better Finder Rename and Adobe Photoshop (File ⇒ Automate ⇒ Create Droplet…). On macOS 15 Sequoia and later, all of them run into the same security block: the droplet is reported as “damaged and can’t be opened”, or — in Photoshop’s misleading wording — Could not complete the Create Droplet command because the file was not found. The droplet is not damaged and the file is not missing; macOS is simply refusing to run an unsigned, user-created application. The fix below applies to droplets from any of these apps.

A Better Finder Attributes has supported droplets for a very long time and there are many people relying on them.

Unfortunately, the idea of an independent, user-created, application running on macOS sits very uncomfortably with Apple’s push to enforce the strictest security on macOS and to privilege its own App Store over third party stores, and droplets have subsequently become less and less straightforward to use.

First they had to be eliminated from the Mac App Store products, because of the code signing requirements and “App Review”.

Under macOS 13 Ventura, newly created droplets have started appearing as “damaged” and have required the following “trick” to launch:

1. find the droplet in the Finder
2. hold down the Control key on your keyboard and click on its icon
3. choose Open

Clicking through the warning dialog would then start it properly.

You can find the entire procedure in the video tutorial at:

• Droplets in macOS 13 Ventura & later

As of macOS 15 Sequoia this no longer works and brings up a dialog that says {Your Droplet Name} is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Bin. (This file was downloaded on an unknown date.).

In order to override this, you now need to take a trip to the Settings app for each droplet:

1. first double-click your droplet, and dismiss the Damaged… dialog
2. open Settings app (e.g. Apple Menu ⇒ System Settings…)
3. go to Privacy & Security
4. scroll down towards the bottom until you find the {Your Droplet Name} was blocked to protect your Mac. entry
5. click on the Open Anyway
6. select Open
7. enter your credentials

If you find any of this frightening or off-putting… well that is the point. If you want to see a full discussion of the actual security implications, this is covered in detail in the video above.

The same fix applies to Adobe Photoshop droplets

Droplets created with Photoshop’s File ⇒ Automate ⇒ Create Droplet… command are user-created, unsigned applications just like ours, so macOS Sequoia blocks them in exactly the same way.

With Photoshop 26.5 and later, creating the droplet appears to succeed, but the first attempt to run it fails with the error Could not complete the Create Droplet command because the file was not found. — the message is misleading: the droplet has been created and no file is missing; macOS has simply refused to launch it. Older Photoshop versions show the same "…" is damaged and can't be opened dialog described above.

The workaround is identical: try to run the droplet once, dismiss the error, then open System Settings ⇒ Privacy & Security, scroll down to the "{Your Droplet Name}" was blocked to protect your Mac. entry and click Open Anyway. Be aware that macOS ties the approval to the individual droplet, not to Photoshop — so you have to repeat this for every newly created droplet.

Using Presets as an Alternative to Droplets

I would also like to point out that the presets feature offers an alternative for droplets for many common tasks.

You can learn more about Presets in this help book, or in the video linked below:

• Introducing Presets (3m 48s)

If you do require droplets, or just prefer using them to presets, I’m afraid you will have to put up with the added “security” shenanigans; there is nothing that I or any third party developer can do about this.

[Back to Help Topics]