How to Fix GeeXLab.app is damaged and can’t be opened on macOS

I received several feedbacks telling me that GeeXLab can’t be launched because macOS says it’s damaged. This morning I tested and indeed, macOS (Big Sur) displays the following message when you try to start GeeXLab (both ARM64 and Intel X86_64 versions):

Damaged??? Someone is lying here. I’m sure that GeeXLab is not damaged. macOS (and Apple!) wants you to destroy the planet with ultra consumerism. If something doesn’t work, just move it to the Bin and buy a new one. I’m sorry but there’s no future with such kind of OS!

That said, back to our problem. I found a simple way to fix this warning message using a command line utility called xattr.
Just open a terminal in GeeXLab folder and type:

xattr -cr ./GeeXLab.app

This command resets or removes all extended file attributes. Now you should be able to launch GeeXLab:

 
I told you that GeeXLab wasn’t damaged.

Don’t ask me why, I don’t know why those file attributes must be cleared. The original GeeXLab.app works perfectly on my mac Mini. To ship GeeXLab, I just compress the GeeXLab folder using macOS own zip utility and I upload the zip file on Geeks3D server. Nothing special here. I did these steps hundred of times since 2012 to ship GeeXLab but now, something has changed in macOS (or in Xcode?). Anyways, the fix is simple and that’s the important thing.

And according to this article (the source of the tips), this damaged error is rather common (see the comments section)…