Problems downloading Sigil
 

I am a new user and attempted to download the Mac version of Sigil. The first time the file downloaded but my Mac would not install it. I assumed it was because I had just installed Big Sur and Sigil had not yet been not updated to integrate into Big Sur. I deleted the download and tried a few days later when a new version of Sigil was available. Now the downloads do not complete. The download starts but part way through the connection is lost. I tried downloading on my old Mac which runs Mohave and had the same result. I originally used Safari and then changed to Chrome with the same result. Is there a problem at Github?

Not any that I am aware of. But one never knows.

So clear your browser cache and try again.

First Make sure you do NOT have "open safe files" after download checked in macOS Preferences!

Here are the steps for Catalina (should work on Big Sur)

1. download the *.txz file.
2. move it manually from your download folder to your Desktop (do not skip this step!)
3. double click on it and you should see it expand into Sigil.app
4. drag and drop the Sigil.app into your Applications folder

Once in Applications, right click on Sigil.app and select open from the menu. It will say "no"
Immediately right click again on Sigil.app and select open from the menu and Sigil should successfully launch for the first time.

You should not have to do that again unless you upgrade Sigil or reinstall it.

@KevinH : You're the Mac expert here, so I don't want to give any bad advice. But I just learned today that the Homebrew version of Sigil literally uses the txz file from our releases for its Sigil installation. And they're staying current with our releases. Do you think it might be worth mentioning a Homebrew Sigil install to some Mac users as an alternative method? It compares our sha256 checksum as part of its process.

That seems okay to me as long as they point to the latest 1.4.3 txz version and it matches exactly our shasum -a 256 output.

I personally just do not use Homebrew for much of anything as no matter how I try, it ends up installing things under /usr/local that end up being found and used in builds before the versions I personally build to run on macOS specific 10.12 versions of macOS.

If it installed literally *everything* in /opt/cask/ guaranteed and never ever touched /usr/local I would be much much happier. I tried their published way of trying that but inevitably one or more packages always ended up in usr local.

Kevin

I have no idea what this is good for. I have never done it this way before, but I always extract the archive in the download folder and move Sigil.app accordingly.

You can not launch an executable from the Download folder without macOS opening it in a hidden (re-homed) sandbox someplace in tmp that breaks many apps that look for parts relative to it.
This has been true for quite a while on macOS and was done on purpose to help improve security.

Manually moving that file to your Desktop (or anyplace outside of Downloads) removes the extra metadata flags that determines if and when macOS will do that.

That is why that step is there. Some people try to run apps, executables and even third party unpackers in Downloads and that causes problems.

You accomplish the same thing when you manually move Sigil.app outside of Downloads just on the unpacked file.

Sigil is fully relocatable and will run from any location on macOS (not only Applications) so some people just left it in Downloads which caused lotsof issues as they did not know about this GateKeeper related security mechanism.

Thanks. I finally succeeded in downloading and installing Sigil and now I am learning how to make it work.

So are we all. :)

There is always something new to learn or trick to master. :chinscratch: