Your Mac can control the apps that can access files and folders. If you don’t know, you have control over the apps, whether you want a particular app to access the files and folders on your Mac. This guide will show you how to control and manage app access to the files and folders on your Mac.
Being a security feature, this is important for those who keep their files secure from the spying apps or the apps that access your data on our Mac without your permission. You may give full access to the apps that you trust or don’t allow the untrust apps to access the files and folders.
Note: This feature is supported in macOS Catalina version 10.15 or later. If your Mac is running below this version, you will not find any option to control the apps to access the files and folders. Make sure you keep your system up to date to get new features and security updates.
With the new macOS release, you now have full control over the apps that can access what’s on your Mac. This is more of app permissions that you can control, what apps can do with your Mac. We have already shown you how to disable location access for specific apps, now here’s how to disable app access to files and folders on your Mac.
How To Control Or Stop Apps From Accessing Files & Folders
It’s pretty easy to manage the apps permissions since we are doing most things via the System Preferences, you will know once you learn it. To change, manage, and control what apps can have access to files and folders on the Mac, here’s what you need to do.
- Head over to the Apple icon in the menu bar and click on the System Preferences.
- Click Security & Privacy from the settings list.
- Under the Security & Privacy, click the Privacy tab.
- On the left side pane, click Files and Folders.
- Here, you will see a list of apps on the right side of the window. These are the apps that can access the files and folders or the specific areas of your Mac’s storage.
- Uncheck the box for any specific area that you don’t want the apps to access or use. You may need to click the Lock icon at the bottom of the window and enter the admin or your user account password to make any changes.
Like most other things you do on your Mac, these settings can be adjusted later in case you change your mind or want to give the apps access again.
Do note that, any app that you revoke access for will no longer be able to read and write files from the location. Some apps may create issues with it since it’s required to run the app properly, so make sure you know what you are doing before you revoke the access.
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