Troubleshooting · macOS
macOS¶
The usual suspects on a Mac, and the plain fix for each.
"App can't be opened" / unidentified developer¶
macOS blocks apps it doesn't recognize. If it came from the tool's official site: System Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll down → Open Anyway. Not sure it's official? Stop and check first.
It wants permission for folders¶
The first time a terminal or agent touches Documents/Desktop, macOS asks. This is good — it's your least-privilege system working. Allow the specific folder your practice work lives in; don't grant Full Disk Access just to make dialogs go away.
"command not found" after installing¶
Same story as every system: the terminal doesn't know where the new program lives.
- Fully quit Terminal (Cmd+Q) and reopen. Try again.
- Still failing? Ask AI: "I installed [tool] on macOS and get 'command not found'. Walk me through fixing my PATH one step at a time."
Homebrew, in one paragraph¶
Guides will tell you to "brew install" things. Homebrew is a free installer for terminal tools — one command installs it (get it from brew.sh, the official site), and afterwards brew install [tool] handles the fiddly parts. It's safe and standard; just get the install command from brew.sh itself, not a random blog.
Where your stuff is¶
Your files live under /Users/yourname/ — the terminal shortcut for it is ~. So cd ~/Documents/ai-practice means "go to the ai-practice folder in my Documents." When a command fails with "no such file or directory," you're usually one cd away from where you meant to be.