MacOS WebODM Installation - The application "Web ODM Manager" can't be opened

WebODM
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Dear Forums,

Newbie with a Mac installation problem. I have purchased the Standard version of the WebODM installer and I am trying to install the product on the following system:

iMac Retina 5K, 27 inch, Late 2015, 3.2GHz Quad Core Intel i5, 24GB RAM, 1TB SSD
macOS Catalina 10.15.7

I am following the Installation Manual dated 04/13/18.

When I try to open the WebODM Manager application in my application folder, the Mac returns the error; The application “WebODM Manager” can’t be opened.

Here are the steps I am taking:

  1. Go to the download URL on Google Drive given in my welcome email

  2. WebODM_Setup.zip - Open with ZIP Extractor

  3. Authorize Zip Extractor

  4. Login to my Google account and Extract files to my account (42 files)

  5. Download the WebODM Manager.app folder

  6. Move the resulting WebODM Manager application from Downloads to Applications (11.6MB)

  7. Double Click on the Web ODM Manager file in Applications

At this stage I get the error message above.

Trouble shooting steps performed so far, following other forum posts:

  1. I have changed my Security and Privacy>General settings to allow apps downloaded from “Anywhere”.

  2. I have run the following command in terminal:

chmod 755 /Applications/WebODM\ Manager.app/Contents/MacOS/WebODM\ Manager

(I note that after this step the file /Applications/WebODM\ Manager.app/Contents/MacOS/WebODM\ Manager shows up as a Unix Executable of 317KB whereas before it was showing as a text file of the same size in Finder)

Having performed this step, double clicking on the WebODM Manager in my application folder now returns the error:

“WebODM Manager” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Bin.

I think I must be making a very basic error in my installation procedure since I am falling at the first fence.

Could anyone please offer some advice on what I may be doing wrong?

Thank you very much in advance for your time in reviewing my problem.

Best Regards,

Jon

1 Like
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Welcome!

Sorry for the trouble.

Please try again without using Google Drive’s apps feature. Download the full zip to your Downloads folder, use MacOS Finder to unzip it, and then follow the instructions along from there.

If that doesn’t work, please reach out to [email protected].

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Thanks very much for the advice. Strangely, I was just trying exactly what you suggest!

If I download the entire Zip from Google Drive and open the resulting zipped folder in my Downloads folder using Finder, then I can see three things - two PDFs and the WebODM Manager Application of size 11.6MB. If I copy this application into my Applications folder and then try to double click it to launch then I get the same error message: The application “Web ODM Manager” can’t be opened.

I will reach out to the email address that you have suggested - thank you for your time so far.

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Just in case it helps anyone else on the forums…

With huge thanks to BC (Saijin_Naib) and his patient Remote Desktop support recently, this post is resolved I’m up and running!

The main problem was caused by me transferring the WebODM Zip file to my own Google Drive before downloading to my Mac. This seems to corrupt the ZIP file in some way. So make sure to download the ZIP directly from the Google Drive URL supplied in the welcome email to the target computer (use the download button in the top right of the screen) and unzip with Finder. Er…exactly as BC suggested on the 22 Feb, you may say! Correct, but I hadn’t quite appreciated what he was saying :clown_face:.

However, for other macOS Catalina users, be aware that it was also necessary to installl an older version of Docker (4.12.0) in order to achieve compatibility with Catalina 10.1.5.7. So perhaps this may help someone else too?

I have a long way to go in improving the quality of my datasets in order to achieve the quality I would like to see in 2D and 3D output, but at least I have a working system!

Thanks again, BC, for the top notch support.

2 Likes
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Any time! And thank you for taking the time to write what you figured out for other folks.

We will be updating the PDFs you get during purchase to help avoid this pitfall, I hope!

Also, related to this, Docker and Apple have pushed the minimum supported version of MacOS to 11.x. Our site now reflects this change, but we advise as always to keep your Mac on the most current release of MacOS it supports to avoid disruption.

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That doesn’t sound very good, which obviously has nothing to do with WebODM. I wonder what Google is doing to your files to corrupt them. Sounds like it shouldn’t be trusted with data one might actually need, such as backups.

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