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Install

Download Reveal, open it past Gatekeeper once, and let it keep itself up to date.

Reveal is a personal project in development. What you can download is an alpha: it is not signed with an Apple developer certificate, it only runs on Apple silicon, and it has rough edges. This page says what that means in practice.

What you need

  • A Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later). Reveal is built for aarch64 only; there is no Intel build.
  • macOS 11 or later.
  • Photos to point it at. Reveal never rewrites your originals: it reads them where they are, and keeps its own index and caches elsewhere. See Files and sidecars.

Download

The latest version is a disk image on GitHub:

Reveal.dmg

Open the disk image and drag Reveal into your Applications folder.

After that, Reveal updates itself: a few seconds after it opens it looks for a newer version, and offers to install it. Updates are signed, so they install without the step below. You can also check by hand in Settings → About.

Open an unsigned app

Reveal is not notarized by Apple, so macOS refuses to open it the first time. This is Gatekeeper doing its job, and you only have to get past it once.

  1. Open Reveal from Applications. macOS says it cannot verify the app. Dismiss the message.
  2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and scroll down to the Security section. Reveal is listed as blocked.
  3. Click Open Anyway, then confirm.

On older versions of macOS, right-click (or Control-click) the app and choose Open instead; the dialog then offers an Open button. The exact wording changes between macOS releases, but the idea does not: you are the one telling the system you trust this app.

If you would rather not run an unsigned binary, the source is public: github.com/ZeFish/Reveal.

Updating

Reveal looks for a newer version a few seconds after it opens. When one exists, a small card appears at the bottom of the window with the release notes. Install & restart downloads it, checks its signature, replaces the app and reopens it, with a short “What’s new” the first time. Later hides the card until the next launch. To check on demand, open Settings → About and press Check now.

If an update ever fails, you can still do it by hand: quit Reveal, download the latest disk image, and drag Reveal into Applications, replacing the old one.

Your preferences (prefs.json), presets, LUTs and Reveal’s index live in your user Library, in ~/Library/Application Support/co.utopie.reveal, not inside the app, so they carry over. Your photos are never part of an update.