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When your system blocks it

Signing an application means paying Microsoft or Apple every year for a certificate. This project does not, so the first run is refused on both.

Nothing below weakens anything permanently, and none of it is specific to this program - it is what every unsigned open-source download needs.

Windows

If Smart App Control is on, the program will not start and Windows will say very little about why. Microsoft's own page is plain about the rule:

If the app is unsigned, or the signature is invalid, Smart App Control will consider it untrusted and block it for your protection.

— What is Smart App Control?

There is no run anyway on that dialog. The switch is the only way past it.

  1. Open Windows Security.
  2. Go to App & browser control → Smart App Control.
  3. Set it to Off.
  4. Run the program.

Can I turn it back on afterwards?

Yes. Microsoft's page answers the question everybody asks before touching that switch: "Recent Windows updates allow Smart App Control to be re-enabled without requiring a clean installation." Turning it back on was tested here on Windows 11 and worked from the same switch.

That is not the dialog I got

A blue box headed Windows protected your PC is SmartScreen, not Smart App Control. That one you can pass without changing any setting:

  1. Click More info.
  2. Click Run anyway.

macOS

The app is signed ad-hoc - enough that macOS will run it at all on Apple silicon - but it is not notarised, so Gatekeeper refuses the first open.

Move it before you open it

Unzip the download and drag the app into your Applications folder first. An app still sitting where the zip left it is run from a read-only copy somewhere else on the disk, which is why it can be allowed and still behave as if it were not. Moving it in Finder ends that.

The way through is to try once and then allow it, in that order:

  1. Double-click HackintoshEFIBuilder.app. It will be refused. That refusal is what creates the entry in the next step.
  2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to Security, and click Open Anyway next to the app's name.
  3. Enter your login password.

Apple notes that this "button is available for about an hour after you try to open the app" (Open a Mac app from an unknown developer). If it is not there, try to open the app again and go back.

macOS remembers the exception, and it opens normally from then on.

Linux

Nothing blocks it. The AppImage only needs the executable bit.

chmod +x HackintoshEFIBuilder-linux-x64.AppImage
./HackintoshEFIBuilder-linux-x64.AppImage

None of this worked

The builder also runs without the window, in a terminal, from a package that has no graphical part at all - see Without the window. It asks the same questions and writes the same EFI folder.

On Windows, note that Smart App Control blocks that one for the same reason it blocks the app; the console package is not a way around that setting.