Homebrew – Applications Installed with Brew Cask Won’t Launch for Other Users

homebrew

I have two users accounts on my Mac, one for personal use and one for work use. I use Homebrew to install most of my applications.

However, whatever GUI application I install using brew cask install <app>, it won't launch for the other user. Every time I try to open such an app with the other user, I get an error like:

The application "Spotify" can't be opened.

I noticed that the application files are installed owned by the installer (in this case the user work):

$ ls -l /Applications/
 ...
drwxr-xr-x@  3 root    wheel   96 Feb 11 20:13 Siri.app/
drwxr-xr-x@  3 work    staff   96 Feb  6 19:52 Spotify.app/

How can I get the apps to launch also for other users on the system?

Best Answer

The issue seems to be some directories in the app folders missing the execute bit. You can check permissions using for example:

find /Applications/Spotify.app/ -type d -exec ls -ld {} \;

Directories should have permissions drwxr-xr-x@ but some were drwxr--r--@.

The following command will change all directories to have the execute permission present:

sudo find /Applications/Spotify.app/ -type d -exec chmod og+x {} \;

The same needs to be run for all apps having this issue.

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