librewolf homebrew installation is damaged

[BitSynKed]

I think this occurred from the latest update to librewolf. Whenever I try to open it, the computer tells me its damaged and should be trashed.
I tried reinstalling it, and when that didn't work I also forced the cache to remove all installs so that the .dmg file would be downloaded again. Reinstalling with that newly downloaded librewolf is still damaged.
I then downloaded it manually from librewolf's website and installed to Applications, keeping both versions. The manual download works without an issue, the homebrew copy is still corrupted.
Is anyone having similar issues? Should I submit an issue to the homebrew-cask branch?

[flowoy96]

Hey, this is due to macOS's Gatekeeper. Just reinstall LibreWolf with the following flag:

brew reinstall librewolf --no-quarantine

This should solve the problem :)

[Jolg42]

It looks like the tracking issue was closed

https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/browser/macos/-/issues/19
Now moved to https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues/710

[AllThePi]

Just commenting to say this is still the case for me on 1/24/24

[justinnichols]

And still happening on Sonoma 14.4 on an M2 Macbook Air. If, perchance, any Librewolf devs see this...if we're supposed to install with --no-quarantine then perhaps the installation instructions for macOS on the main website should state this.

[gromgit]

the installation instructions for macOS on the main website should state this.

It does now: https://librewolf.net/installation/macos/#homebrew, which in turn points to https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#why-is-librewolf-marked-as-broken

[k4u5hik]

Thank you this worked on Tahoe 26.2 (25C56).

[lightnin]

Still happening Sonomo 14.5 on M3.
Would it be possible to change the brew instruction set so that we did not have to reinstall with the --no-quarantine flag after each update? Or does it require action by librewolf maintainers?

[purajit]

There isn't much that can be done, there's no way to tell Brew to install it with the same flags again, and it's not part of the formula configuration.

[mrtysn]

Same issue on M2 Max chip with MacOS Sonoma 14.6.1. The fix below still works.

brew reinstall librewolf --no-quarantine

[jchannon]

Just had to use the fix today 😢

[d33p-dev]

[SMillerDev]

It's only fixable by librewolf

[d33p-dev]

Yep sorry. I was speed running through different things and didn't even realize I stumbled onto the HomeBrew GH and not LibreWolf. Sorry, I'll remove comment.

[SniffleSneeze]

I can confirm this still work to bypass macOS security on 15.3.1 sequoia:

brew reinstall librewolf --no-quarantine 

[SMillerDev]

It doesn't actually fix anything, it bypassed macOS security to install the cask without enabling the usual security triggering.

[SniffleSneeze]

yeah apologies, I mainly wanted to bump up the tread, knowing that in the coming days LibreWolf and Brave are gonna probably be looked into.

[moonpost]

confirming latest fresh install as of today and it still immediately comes up with "librewolf is damaged..."

[shoguevara]

[LouKordos]

Am i understanding correctly that there is no proper fix for this and that i need to run the reinstall command + the patches you mentioned everytime this appears?

[JordanRex]

its not a bug. its a refusal to bow down to corporate bs. its fair. not much of an effort to run a single command for free software.

[fabianschulz]

What is going to happen to the LibreWolf cask starting September 2026?

fabian@MacBook ~ % brew upgrade librewolf
Warning: librewolf has been deprecated because it does not pass the macOS Gatekeeper check! It will be disabled on 2026-09-01.

I quote from https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/ :

(...) we do not notarize the macOS version of the browser: we don't have a paid Apple Developer license and we don't want to support this signing mechanism that is put behind a paywall without providing significant gains.

Does this mean that the LibreWolf cask will be removed from Homebrew starting September?

[SMillerDev]

It will be uninstallable from the main tap. If someone else makes a tap for it you'll still be able to use that, but the Homebrew maintainers will not maintain that

[thekryz]

Update on this: upstream started signing the macOS builds as of release 154.0.1-2 (2026-08-26).

Release notes: https://librewolf.dev/librewolf/bsys6/releases/tag/154.0.1-2

I installed the 154.0.1-2 arm64 dmg manually and it passes the Gatekeeper check:

$ spctl -a -vvv /Applications/LibreWolf.app
/Applications/LibreWolf.app: accepted
source=Notarized Developer ID
origin=Developer ID Application: Calibour Limited (2S5C46ZFKS)

No quarantine attribute is set after installation, and the app launches without any dialog. The version the cask currently points to (154.0,2) is still Signature=adhoc, so the deprecation was accurate at the time — it just isn't anymore.

The cask hasn't picked up the new version, so as things stand it will still be disabled on 2026-09-01 while pointing at the last unsigned build. Might be worth someone opening a PR to bump it and drop the disable stanza before then.

[simesy]

With the new signed release I was able to reinstall to fix the issue.

brew uninstall librewolf
brew install --cask librewolf