ADR 0179 — The macOS desktop app is com.alexandruleca.imprint.desktop

• Status: Accepted
• Date: 2026-11-11
• Related: ADR 0055 (the ad-hoc signed desktop bundle), ADR 0075 (privacy texts in the enclosing app), ADR 0131 (recording the computer’s audio)

Context

electron-builder’s appId was tech.brightspaces.imprint, set with early packaging work on 2026-04-30 with no record of why. It is the Electron app’s CFBundleIdentifier on macOS, its helpers’ prefix, and the identity macOS privacy consent (TCC) keys grants to. Everything else in the macOS packaging uses the project’s own namespace: the installer’s enclosing Imprint.app (com.alexandruleca.imprint), its package and distribution (com.alexandruleca), and the CLI launcher (com.alexandruleca.imprint.launcher). The user asked for the desktop app to follow.

The .pkg installs the Electron app inside the enclosing Imprint.app, so the two bundles cannot share an identifier.

Decision

The Electron app’s appId is com.alexandruleca.imprint.desktop. electron-builder names its helpers after it (com.alexandruleca.imprint.desktop.helper and so on). The enclosing app stays com.alexandruleca.imprint. The release validator and its tests use the new identifiers, and a test keeps the two apart.

Rejected alternatives

• com.alexandruleca.imprint for the desktop app too. The .pkg nests the desktop app inside an app with that identifier, and two nested bundles with one identifier leave macOS unsure which app a launch or a privacy grant belongs to.
• Keeping tech.brightspaces.imprint. It names no part of this project, and its only advantage, keeping existing grants, matters little: macOS ties grants to an ad-hoc signed app’s exact build (ADR 0055), so updates already lose them in practice.

Consequences

• macOS treats the desktop app as a new app once: it asks again for the microphone, and for system audio when a recording takes the computer’s audio. Grants recorded for the old identifier no longer apply, and stale ones from earlier updates go with them.
• For .pkg installs, grants that macOS attributes to the enclosing app (com.alexandruleca.imprint) are unaffected.
• The desktop app’s data folder follows the product name, Imprint, so it is unchanged. Windows releases ship electron-builder’s portable build inside the Inno Setup installer, whose own AppId is a fixed GUID, so Windows installs and updates are unaffected.

Invalidation conditions

• If the macOS app is ever signed with a Developer ID, keep this identifier: the signing requirement would then keep grants across updates.
• If the .pkg stops nesting the desktop app in its own Imprint.app, the desktop app could take com.alexandruleca.imprint itself.

Validation

• tests/test_release_validation.py validates fixture bundles under the new identifiers. tests/test_macos_microphone_bundle.py checks the two identifiers stay distinct.
• Not run: a macOS build and install with the new identifier.