Sparkle asking for password on every app update

[prohtex]

I recently set up a new iMac Pro with High Sierra 10.13.3. For some reason, all my apps that use Sparkle to update are now asking for authentication before updating, something that never happened before. Any ideas about why this is happening and what I can do to resolve? Entering valid user credentials works, but getting authenticated with every app update doesn't appear to be normal behavior.

[kornelski]

Is it possible that apps in /Applications are read-only for you? See "Get Info" on a few apps in Finder.

If you're the only user of this computer, this may help:

sudo chown -R $USER /Applications/*.app

Alternatively, if this dialog is a mistake, check out Console.app. Sparkle should print more information there explaining why it needs it.

[prohtex]

drwxr-xr-x 3 501 staff 96B Mar 19 20:54 Swinsian.app

You're right, a different user account installed these applications. Thanks.

[jkbullard]

The ownership/permissions you posted may be correct.

• Apps built into macOS typically are owned by root:wheel.
• Apps installed by a user who is an admin are typically owned by _the_shortusername:staff.
• Permissions are typically 775 (rwxrwxr-x) or 755 (rwxr-xr-x) -- the "d" just means the .app is a directory (all .apps are).
• BBEdit, Firefox, GarageBand, System Preferences are all 775 on my system; the rest are 775.

Note: For the .app itself, you usually only need "x" permissions, because .apps are directories and you need "x" permissions to search them. You wouldn't ordinarily write into the contents of the .app folder, you'd write into the .app/Contents folder or the .app/Contents/Resources folder.

If this is happening on all your apps, you might want to examine the ownership/permissions of /Applications folder itself. I've seen situations where a bad installer (not necessarily evil, just ignorance or carelessness, I think) has modified the permissions of /Applications. See System Folder Security for more info.

[prohtex]

In my case, I created a user (501), installed some applications, then removed that user. The new user (504), had read-only permissions on many of those apps, whereas the original user (501), had full permissions. It seemed like the right move to chown my app bundles to the new user, which is what I did. If the issue isn't resolved, I'll post again!

PS, my Applications Dir:

drwxrwxr-x+ 124 root admin 3.9K Mar 19 21:04 Applications