Amid the rapid rise in AI agents requesting “Full Disk Access” to your Mac, Apple says it is making changes to macOS to protect user privacy, notes 9to5Mac.
macOS Full Disk Access is a special system permission introduced in macOS Catalina to protect your data and privacy. When an app requests Full Disk Access, it’s asking to read and write to locations that are normally off-limits—including Mail, Messages, Time Machine backups, and certain system folders. Granting this permission ensures that trusted utilities (like backup software, data recovery tools, antivirus tools, or system cleaners) can function properly without compromising Apple’s sandboxing model.
In a blog post on its Developer website, the tech giant has this to say: We give developers powerful APIs to build incredible capabilities into their apps for Apple products, backed by a set of controls designed to protect users’ private data. Full Disk Access largely sidesteps these controls in order to allow backup apps to function properly on the Mac. Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems—including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history—without users’ full knowledge and understanding. For communication apps, this can also compromise the privacy of the people users are communicating with.
Going forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action. Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy.
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