Had no internet for 10 hours yesterday (lightning strike took out our cable modem), and discovered that I couldn’t run an application on a M1 Mac that was signed with “Hardened Runtime”.
There were no errors at signing time, but the application would instantly crash with a code signing error.
AFAIK “Hardened Runtime” requires Secure time stamps, and these require internet access. Disabling “Hardened Runtime” or using a cellular Hotspot during signing allowed the application to launch on M1.
Also weirdly, My work Mac which is Intel refused to use the hotspot from my Android phone, after selecting the hotspot it would revert back to the Wi-Fi network. The M1 Mac had no problem. After I rebooted the Intel Mac, it then asked for a password and connected time. So if you face the same problem, looks like you may need to restart too.
This usually is because either the saved password for the hotspot changed or the hotspot “network” changed. I’ve had this happen when I setup a new WiFI router/AP with the same SSID & password. The fix for either issue is to “forget” that WiFI network then re-join it. No need to restart the computer.
I didn’t recall ever connecting this Intel Mac to the Android phone, and when I checked “Advanced” there was only my current Wi-Fi network in the list, so I’m pretty confident that yesterday was the first time I tried to connect them together.
Would it have made any difference if the Mac wasn’t connected to your router at all? IIRC, Mac OS behaves differently whether it thinks there’s no connection at all or there’s a network connection to try on.
Wondering, if you could do that, what would have happened if you turned off the Wi-Fi on the router while you tried to connect to the Android phone.