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Core Data Lab 3.1: Golden Gate support

Oct 1, 2026 — by Ron Elemans

Core Data Lab 3.1 improves compatibility with macOS 27 in multiple ways. A lot of smaller adjustments have to do with some subtle AppKit bugs. However, most changes are related to the “New Features” of System Integrity Protection in macOS 27. This affects only users who use the Search Database function. It required quite some effort to keep the feature working in macOS 27, hence all the prose below.

Overview System Integrity Protection changes

Normally, sandboxed apps can’t access files outside the app’s sandbox. To get access to a file or folder, the sandboxed app must initiate a user interaction. For example, presenting a NSOpenPanel, to retrieve a security-scoped bookmark for a certain file location. This is also what Core Data Lab does, the first time you open the Search Database function. A NSOpenPanel is presented to select a folder that acts as a search path. The bookmark of this selection is stored by Core Data Lab in NSUserDefaults, for future reuse.

Since macOS 15, a valid folder bookmark is not sufficient anymore to open files located in the folder or subfolders, if the folder is (a subfolder of) one of the two official sandbox app container folders, ~/Library/Containers or ~/Library/Group Containers. System Integrity Protection (SIP) in macOS 15 and macOS 26 displays a confirmation dialog each time an app tries to access data from other developer teams located in one of the two app container folders. It is even possible in Xcode to configure the text that is being displayed by said dialog.


Core Data Lab 3.1 - Golden Gate
Traditional Core Data Lab screenshot, showing Movie Explorer Pro database with a recent movie selected.

In macOS 27, SIP goes a large step further by not presenting a dialog at all. Access is simply refused without any warning or user interaction. Access to other app containers in macOS 27 is now only possible by giving the app explicit access to other apps’ data containers in the Files & Folders subsection of the Privacy & Security section of the System Settings. This section is dynamically filled with apps that try to access data from other apps. Permissions can be set individually for each accessed app container, per accessing app.

It is perhaps good to understand that SIP access refusals do normally not happen when the app has a direct bookmark to a file, such as a database, within the app containers. The SIP file protection comes only into action when the app tries to access files using a security-scoped bookmark of (a child folder of) an app container folder.

Handling System Integrity Protection changes

The following features are implemented to keep the Search Database feature in Core Data Lab useful and workable:

  • When Search Database doesn’t find anything when searching in one of the container folders when using macOS 27, a warning bar with a link to the Files & Folders settings in System Settings is being presented at the bottom of the search dialog.
  • The first time this happens, an additional modal dialog appears with some more background info and a button that opens the Files & Folders settings. This dialog can be permanently dismissed.
  • The Search Database dialog contains now a small but handy Refresh button to initiate a new search action after adjusting the settings in System Settings.
  • A new option Bookmark selected database has been added in the Search section of the app settings. When active, it will display a NSOpenPanel after selecting a database in the search results of the Search Database. This panel shows the selected database file preselected, so the only necessary action is hitting the “Confirm Selection” button. After confirming, a bookmark with direct access to the database files will be created and added to the project, so that the database can be easily opened in future project sessions, without SIP warnings, settings changes, or confirmation dialogs. This feature is also supported in macOS 15 and macOS 26.

Known System Integrity Protection issue

A “known issue” when switching from the Core Data Lab Trial version to the release version of Core Data Lab is that SIP may stop trusting any Core Data Lab-related app. To fix this, reset the Privacy & Security settings for Core Data Lab in the Terminal app with the following command:

tccutil reset All betamagic.Core-Data-Lab

This will remove all references to Core Data Lab in the Files & Folders subsection of Privacy & Security settings. To reconfigure the Files & Folders settings for Core Data Lab, first let Core Data Lab access the files where you want to have access to. This will result in adding a fresh “Core Data Lab” item in the Files & Folders subsection of the Privacy & Security settings.

Other macOS 27-related adjustments

A lot of small changes in macOS 27 forced Core Data Lab to implement some adjustments. The following are not under the hood:

  • App icon rendering has been changed in macOS 27. The new app icon of Core Data Lab 3.0 looked worse with the new rendering. To fix this, a new icon has been composed that is a mix of the old macOS 26 rendering exported as a high-res bitmap combined with the new macOS 27 rendering.
  • Because the Core Data Lab app and icons always act as an extension of Xcode, and the icon of Xcode 27 changed to a more dull variant, a new setting Dock Icon has been added in the app settings of Core Data Lab. With this new setting, you can choose between the standard app icon, a more dull variant that matches Xcode 27, and the classic Core Data Lab icon that matches very old Xcode versions. This setting only works in the dock panel, and only when the app runs.

Improvements & fixes

There are several other adjustments in Core Data Lab 3.1:

  • Detection of SwiftData databases has been extended to support new default database locations.
  • Matching of a Core Data Model version with a database has been improved.
  • When a binary object value concerns a NSPredicate, the predicate text is displayed in the Content panel.
  • Display of Transformable attributes and String arrays in the Inspector panel has been restored.

Downloads

Core Data Lab owners can download the update for free from the Mac App Store. If you are not yet a Core Data Lab user, you can try the app for free, for 14 days.


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