Minecraft Launcher on macOS Fails to Update – “Operation Not Permitted”

Minecraft Launcher on macOS repeatedly failed with “Unable to update the launcher.” Reinstalling the launcher and fully updating macOS did not resolve it. The updater log showed “Chromium Embedded Framework — Operation not permitted” and error 9. The eventual solution was manually deleting the launcher folder under Application Support and allowing it to rebuild.

A launcher should detect and repair this state itself, or at minimum provide an actionable error message rather than simply saying “Unable to update the launcher.” Troubleshooting took over an hour just to launch the game.