Course Designer 4

Installing Course Designer 4 on the MacOS

System Requirements

The current version of Course Designer 4 (version 4.34 and higher, English only) is able to run natively on:

  • MacOS 10.13 (High Sierra)
  • MacOS 10.14 (Mojave)
  • MacOS 10.15 (Catalina)

For installation notes on these versions, please see the following sections on this page.

Older versions of the MacOS – 10.7 (Lion), 10.8 (Mountain Lion), 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.11 (El Capitan), and 10.12 (Sierra) can still run an older version (4.33) of the program. That version of the program is available here.

Newer versions of the MacOS system require a helper application (Parallels or any Wine-based technology application such as CrossOver) that enable the PC version of CD4 in all supported languages to run on your Mac. These versions include:

  • MacOS 11 (Big Sur)
  • MacOS 12 (Monterey)
  • MacOS 13 (Ventura)
  • MacOS 14 (Sonoma)
  • MacOS 15 (Sequoia)

We particularly recommend either the paid/supported Wine based program Crossover or the free but unsupported Wine based program PortingKit. Articles that provide step by step information on installing and using Crossover and Porting Kit are here:

Mac Installation (High Sierra and earlier)

Course Designer is not installed through the Apple App Store. You download and install it directly as follows:

  1. In Safari, navigate to coursedesigner.com/download
  2. Click the Download Now (Mac) link to start the download. During the download, the download progress will be displayed on a little toolbar button called “Show downloads” in the top right corner of the Safari window.
  3. When the download is complete, the “Show downloads” button will display a downward-pointing arrow. Click the “Show downloads” button to open the “Downloads” window.
  4. Double-click on the downloaded file, cd434en.dmg . This will open a Finder window that shows the “Course Designer 4” application. On pre-Mavericks versions of Safari, Safari unfortunately opens the new window behind the Safari window, so you may need to move the Safari window to see the new Finder window.
  5. Use Finder’s “File / New Finder Window” menu item to open a new Finder window.
  6. Drag and drop the “Course Designer 4” application into the Applications folder.
  7. If you are running Mac OS Catalina or Mojave, there are additional steps required to clear Course Designer to run on your Mac. See the next section (Clearing CD4 to Run on Your Mac).

Mac Installation (Catalina and Mojave)

Similar to earlier versions, Course Designer is not installed through the Apple App Store. This section describes the steps to download, install, and clear the application to run on your Mac.

With each new version of the MacOS, Apple makes it more difficult to sell an application outside of the App Store. This means there an extra manual step over previous MacOS versions that is needed to clear the application to run on your computer. Use the steps below to install and clear Course Designer. (This video demonstrates how to do the steps). You only need to do these steps one time after you download the application.

Clearing CD4 to Run on Your Mac

  1. In Safari, navigate to coursedesigner.com/download
  2. Click the Download Now (Mac) link to start the download. During the download, the download progress will be displayed on a little toolbar button called “Show downloads” in the top right corner of the Safari window.
  3. When the download is complete, the “Show downloads” button will display a downward-pointing arrow. Click the “Show downloads” button to open the “Downloads” window.
  4. Double-click on the downloaded file, cd434en.dmg . This will open a Finder window that shows the “Course Designer 4” application.
  5. Use Finder’s “File / New Finder Window” menu item to open a new Finder window.
  6. Drag and drop the “Course Designer 4” application AND the file “AllowCourseDesigner.txt” into the Applications folder.
  7. Double click on the AllowCourseDesigner.txt file to open it and copy the text in that file.
  8. In the Applications folder, open the “Utilities” folder and double click on Terminal to open that application.
  9. Paste the text from AllowCourseDesigner.txt into the Terminal application. Type the Enter key.
  10. You should now be able to run Course Designer.