Mac trashes latest GIMP as malware

marty39 · **Joined:** Jan 01, 2026 **Posts:** 3

GIMP Version: 3.20
Operating System: Mac OS
GIMP Experience: Intermediate Level

List any ERROR messages you received:
Malware Blocked and Moved to Trash

“GIMP.app” was not opened because it contains malware. This action did not harm your Mac.

Running latest version of Sequoia on Apple silicon. Installed GIMP 3.20 ARM64 from gimp site. Tried to open it and got a popup that said it was malware and moved to Trash. Same thing happens with GIMP 3.06 which I had just been using. GIMP 3.04 is OK, as is GIMP 3.20 for Intel.

Why is this happening? Is it safe to override malware protection for the Apple silicon version of GIMP 3.20?

Rod · **Joined:** May 16, 2010 **Posts:** 16150

I would assume this is a false positive if you are downloading straight from Gimp.org. This could also be a bug in Gimp-3.2.2 that needs to be fixed for Mac. I get no malware errors installing on Windows and i have not seen any complaints from Linux users as well. Perhaps report the malware issue as a bug for Mac.
You can do that here.
https://www.gimp.org/bugs/

Known issues for Mac systems-
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/i ... 3A%20macOS

sallyanne · **Posted:** Mon Apr 06, 2026 9:41 pm **(#3)**

I always get a warning on my Windows - As I trust the download I run it anyway. As Rod mentions it is probably a false positive.