MacOS – Where is macOS’s incompatible apps blacklist stored

macos

TinkerTool 5's System Maintenance pane has an app blacklist tab:

https://www.bresink.com/osx/300644207-2/Docs-en/pgs/0110-Info.html

In this menu is a list of apps Finder will refuse to launch, because Apple thinks they're incompatible with the newest version of macOS. Apple is sometimes wrong—some of these apps will (mostly) work if launched via the Terminal. (One prominent example was iMovie HD in macOS Yosemite)

Where in the file system is this blacklist actually stored? Could a SIP-disabled machine make changes to it?

Best Answer

On Catalina, the incompatible apps are likely determined programmatically when they reference any 32 bit libraries, so that’s an easy check. During installation and migration, the package that contains the blacklist is downloaded:

I’m not finding any remnants of that file left around - com.apple.pkg.CompatibilityUpdate but you can see things that are moved to the Incompatible Software folder at the root.

Also, for Catalina, there are efforts to package just enough libraries to run old favorite apps even though Apple isn’t shipping the libraries needed.

Since Retrocative is open source, there’s hope interested people can log apps they want, contribute or fund people that are able to generate the code needed for preserving vintage bits on more modern OS.