How to Control What Apps Can Access Files & Folders in macOS Big Sur & Catalina

You can control which apps have access to files and folders on the Mac. This article will walk you through how to manage what apps can access files and folders in macOS.

This is a security feature that is relatively new, helping to precent apps from having full access to the Mac and filesystem if that access is not necessary. Thus if you want to manage folder and file access in macOS you will need MacOS Catalina 10.15 or later installed. With a modern macOS release, you now have full control over which apps have access to what on the Mac.

This security feature is undeniably handy but it’s not without some frustration for some users, as it does initially mean you have to deal with a whole ton of new dialogs when apps first try to access locations on your Mac if you’re running the latest macOS versions. But it does also mean that you can go back and revoke access easily if you need to. As you’d imagine that’s all handled via System Preferences, and it’s pretty easy to find and manage once you learn how it works.

How to Control Apps Accessing Files & Folders in MacOS

Here’s how you can adjust, control, manage, and change what apps have access to files and folders on the Mac:

1. Click the Apple logo in the top-left corner of the Mac screen.
2. Click “System Preferences.”
3. Click “Security & Privacy.”
4. Click the “Privacy” tab.
5. Click “Files and Folders” in the pane on the left.
6. You’ll see a list of apps on the right side of the window. These are apps that have “Full Disk Access” or access to specific areas of your Mac’s storage.
7. Clear the checkbox for any access that you want to remove.

You may need to click the padlock at the bottom of the System Preferences window and enter your password to make any changes.

When finished, close out of System Preferences and you’re done.

Any app that you revoke access for will no longer be able to read files from, or write them to, the location in question. Depending on the app, that could cause some considerable issues, so make sure you know what you’re doing before you remove access for anything, let alone everything. Denying access to the file system from some apps will make them just not work, or unusable if you can’t access files when you want to. Thus this is really only an appropriate setting to be adjusting for more advanced Mac users who understand the ramifications of doing so.

Like most other things, these settings can be adjusted again at any time to accommodate for changes in preferences, or as needed. Just return to the same Security preference panel to do so.

More control over access to storage is just one of the changes introduced in macOS Catalina 10.15 and later releases.

Do you manually adjust or manage apps access to the file system and folders on the Mac using this feature? Let us know what you think of this security feature and how you use it in the comments below.