macOS says HuddleOwl is damaged.It is not.

The three steps

1. Download the build for your chip. Apple Silicon or Intel, and if you are unsure, the Apple menu then About This Mac will say.
2. Open the .dmg and drag HuddleOwl into Applications.
3. Open it. macOS will say the app is damaged and cannot be opened. Run this once in Terminal, then open it again:

xattr -cr /Applications/HuddleOwl.app

What that command does, and why the warning is wrong

Nothing is damaged. When you download a file, macOS attaches an attribute to it called com.apple.quarantine. On first launch, Gatekeeper reads that attribute and checks whether the app is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple. HuddleOwl is not notarised yet, so the check fails, and the message macOS shows for that failure is the same message it shows for a genuinely corrupted download.

xattr -cr clears extended attributes recursively from that path. It removes the quarantine flag from the app you just installed, and it touches nothing else on your computer.

You should be suspicious of any app that asks you to do this, and the honest answer is that you are choosing to trust the developer instead of Apple's check. If you would rather not, verify the download first: every release publishes SHA256SUMS.txt, and you can confirm the file you have is the file that was built.

shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS.txt --ignore-missing

Notarisation is on the list, and this page will lose its reason to exist the day it lands.

The two permissions it will ask for

Microphone

Asked the first time you start a meeting. This is your side of the call. Without it there is no transcript.

Screen and System Audio Recording

Asked when HuddleOwl captures the other side of the call. It sounds alarming and it is worth being precise about: macOS puts system audio capture behind the same permission as screen recording, so granting it is how an app hears what comes out of your speakers. HuddleOwl does not record your screen.

If capture fails after you have granted it, the both-sides guide covers the stale-permission case, which needs a full quit and reopen rather than a second grant.

Where your meetings are kept

In a folder on your disk that you can open from inside the app. Transcripts, cues, briefs and draft emails all live there, and deleting the folder deletes all of it. There is no server holding a second copy and no account to close.

Uninstalling

Drag the app to the Trash, then delete that data folder. That is the whole procedure.