macOS and Linux Trusted Directories

On macOS and Linux computers, top-level files found in a trusted directory (and any of its sub-folders) are approved, but their contents are not analyzed or approved.

For example, files that an installer would install or files that could be extracted from an archive file are neither analyzed nor approved when their top-level file is placed in a trusted directory.

However, on macOS computers, if a PKG file is placed in a trusted directory, it becomes an approved installer. This means that even though the PKG file was not analyzed, anything written from the PKG by the installer process is approved.

For both macOS and Linux trusted directories, you can accomplish global approval of the files for an application or archive by expanding or extracting the package so that the files it would install or extract are actually in the trusted directory.